Preamble

The House met at half-past Two o'clock

PRAYERS

[MR. SPEAKER in the Chair]

Oral Answers to Questions — WALES

Economic Activity

Mr. Barry Jones: asked the Secretary of State for Wales if he is satisfied with the level of economic activity in Wales.

The Secretary of State for Wales (Mr. Nicholas Edwards): No, Sir. The Government's economic polices are designed to reduce inflation and create the conditions for soundly based economic expansion.

Mr. Jones: In Wales, is not the consequence of the Budget a decline in economic activity and a likely surge of unemployment? Will not this hurt the economy of Wales, given the steel cutbacks that we have already had? Did the right hon. Gentleman make clear to his Cabinet colleagues that the Budget

would be a deeply injurious blow to the prospects of working people in Wales?

Mr. Edwards: I do not accept that the Budget is damaging to Wales. It is designed to restore economic health after the mess left to us by the previous Government and to defeat inflation. The Budget contained a notable package of measures for small businesses which will be of particular advantage to Wales. The hon. Gentleman will be aware that the unemployment trend was rising steeply when we came into office.

Mr. Geraint Howells: After 12 months at the Welsh Office, is the Secretary of State now in a position to say who is responsible for the high unemployment in Wales?

Mr. Edwards: As I pointed out in my first speech from the Dispatch Box, the first brief that I was given on entering office warned that unemployment would go on rising substantially, that we were on a rising trend of unemployment in Wales and that unemployment had more than doubled under the previous Government. It will take time to change round the Welsh economy after the mess left by our predecessors.

Sir Anthony Meyer: In view of the great interest in economic activity displayed by Labour Members, will my right hon. Friend say whether they have supported his request to the TUC to call off its day of national sabotage on 14 May?

Mr. Edwards: I am bound to say that I hope they have. Perhaps one or other of the Labour Members will say whether they support this lunatic step, which can do only more damage to the economy in Wales.

Mr. Wigley: Following his visit to Gwynedd last week, does the Secretary of State now fully appreciate the likely drop in economic activity in that part of Wales? Will he bring forward an urgent programme of capital expenditure in the public sector, in order, at least in the short term, to make up for this fall?

Mr. Edwards: I am very much aware of the serious problems facing that part of Wales. We had a useful and constructive discussion with the local authorities, and I value the way in which they approach these problems. We shall consider very carefully the proposals that they put to us. I have already told the hon. Member that we shall be reviewing regional development status in areas when the situation changes.

Mr. Alec Jones: I am sure that the right hon. Gentleman will be pleased to know that at least there is unanimity among us over our dissatisfaction with the level of economic activity in Wales. With 92,000 unemployed, and 50,000 redundancies announced since the Secretary of State took office, how can he justify the cuts in public expenditure of £26 million in industry, energy, trade and employment between this year and 1982–83? Can he tell us what effect this is likely to have on economic activity in Wales?
May I add that Labour Members support the trade unions and the people of Wales in their determination and in the actions that they propose on 14 May?

Mr. Edwards: I think that the statement the right hon. Gentleman has just made will do considerable additional damage to the Welsh economy. [Interruption.] It is the kind of encouragement and incitement to industrial damage and disruption that can only be harmful to Wales. It is completely in line with the previous language used by right hon. Gentlemen on the Opposition Benches about the creation of industrial deserts. It seems to be their object to worsen the atmosphere in Wales and to make things more difficult.
As for the redundancy notifications, the right hon. Gentleman will be aware, as he has quoted a figure of 50,000, that these are not a firm guide to actual job losses; indeed, some 6,000 of those redundancy notifications have been withdrawn since they were made. We have announced—and I have announced—a massive programme of additional measures. Expenditure on the Welsh Development Agency is up, and we have announced a very large measure of remedial action in the steel closure areas.

Enterprise Zones

Mr. Hooson: asked the Secretary of State for Wales how many Welsh local authorities have notified his Department that they are interested in exploring the possibility of enterprise zones within their areas.

Mr. Nicholas Edwards: Two, apart from Swansea city council and West Glamorgan county council.

Mr. Hooson: While I realise that it will take time for the success of enterprise zones to be evaluated, may I ask my right hon Friend to ensure that other possible sites are being identified for extension of this policy?

Mr. Edwards: As my hon. Friend knows, this is an experiment. We have suggested one initial site. We are now consulting the local authorities, the Welsh Development Agency and other public bodies about possible alternative sites, and we shall consider carefully any representations that are made to us.

Mr. Anderson: On the basis of the current discussions with the Swansea city council, when does the Secretary of State expect the proposed enterprise zone to come into effect? Will he indicate any possible changes in the guidelines, and will there be an opportunity to discuss those guidelines in the House?

Mr. Edwards: We hope to complete the process of consultation by the time that the House rises for the Summer Recess. Subject to the legislation going through, we hope that the enterprise zones will be in existence by the end of the year. I note that the hon. Gentleman has written to me suggesting some changes in boundaries if the Swansea valley site is selected. I am encouraged by the hon.


Gentleman's suggestion that the area might be extended. That suggests that perhaps he and others see virtues in this experiment.

Sir Raymond Gower: As special measures will be taken in areas where there have been steel closures or the scaling down of activity and as there will be this special experiment in this enterprise zone, and possibly in another enterprise zone, will that not place some burden on agencies, such as the Welsh Development Agency, and possibly on the other parts of Wales which are in neither the steel areas nor the enterprise zone? Will he keep a watch on this aspect, because it could easily be overlooked?

Mr. Edwards: The Welsh Development Agency is not directly responsible for the management of the enterprise zone, though it will be carrying out some land clearance and site preparation in the area if the Swansea valley site is chosen.
I am aware of the additional burdens placed on the agency and I have authorised the recruitment of additional staff for the agency, which tells me that it has the resources to take the action that it thinks is necessary at present.

Mr. Alec Jones: If one or more of these enterprise zones is established in Wales, where will the public expenditure to finance them come from? Will it be additional money to the Secretary of State's budget or will it mean cuts in other items in that budget? If the latter is the case, some of the already poor areas in Wales will have to finance the steel closure areas.

Mr. Edwards: We made it absolutely clear that, as far as the 100 per cent. rate relief is concerned, the local authorities will not have to meet that cost. I assure the right hon. Gentleman that it is not coming from other parts of my budget.

New Firms

Mr. Best: asked the Secretary of State for Wales how many firms and of what nationality, known to his Department, have been set up in Wales since May 1979.

Mr. Nicholas Edwards: Ninety-two firms are known to my Department to have set up in Wales since May 1979, of which 15 are known to have started production. Of the total, 79 are of British

origin, five American, three Swedish, two German, one Canadian, one Swiss and one Danish.

Mr. Best: Does my right hon. Friend agree that that demonstrates a new interest in Wales, not only from those within the United Kingdom but from abroad, and shows an awakening of greater confidence in Wales and in what the Government are doing in the Principality to stimulate industrial development.

Mr. Edwards: I think that it gives the lie to the "industrial desert" assertion. I am glad to report that interest continues, because we have made 30 formal allocations in the first quarter of this year.

Mr. Alan Williams: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that this position is inadequate when Wales, under this Administration, is facing a redundancy level of 1,000 jobs for every week that the Government are in office? Far from there being an indication of new interest, is it not a fact that most of the factories that have already set up were under negotiation—some virtually at the end of negotiation—when there was a change of Administration? As so many of the new firms that come to Wales go to Government factories, will the right hon. Gentleman assure us that, if press reports that the WDA is to sell off £66 million worth of factories prove to be true, the occupants rather than property investors will be given the first opportunity to buy those factories?

Mr. Edwards: I am glad that the right hon. Gentleman left us a few good things, not a total picture of devastation, when he left office. Some of the jobs were in the pipeline. As I pointed out, there were 30 formal allocations in the first quarter of this year, and that shows a continuing interest in Wales.
As to the proposal by the agency to sell factories, those who are occupying them will be given an opportunity to buy. I hope that the right hon. Gentleman is not suggesting that private sector contributions to the finances of the Welsh Development Agency would not be welcome. They would clearly substantially enlarge the scope for its activities and should be encouraged.

Sir Anthony Meyer: Do not these figures suggest how lunatic would be the policy of import controls, as advocated


by some sections of the Labour Party, as they would tend to discourage inward investment?

Mr. Edwards: I entirely agree with the view expressed by my hon. Friend.

Mr. Campbell-Savours: Will the Secretary of State tell the House to what extent the Welsh Development Agency was involved in attracting the companies to which he referred in answer to his hon. Friend the Member for Anglesey (Mr. Best)? Will he also refer this matter to the Secretary of State for Industry, with particular reference to the Northern region, which has been pressing for a Northern development agency?

Mr. Edwards: I cannot give the hon. Gentleman a breakdown, but the Welsh Development Agency clearly played an active role in attracting many of these companies, and many of them are occupying WDA factories. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Industry is well aware of the WDA's record and of what has been happening in Wales.

Pedestrian Crossings

Sir Anthony Meyer: asked the Secretary of State for Wales if he will review the regulations governing the provision of pedestrian crossing facilities on roads for which his Department is directly or indirectly responsible.

The Under-Secretary of State for Wales (Mr. Michael Roberts): I do not think that this will prove necessary. As regards trunk roads, the regulations for the provision of crossings are applied flexibly and with particular regard to the safety of pedestrians. The provision of pedestrian crossings on other roads is the responsibility of local authorities.

Sir. A. Meyer: Is my hon. Friend aware that the people of the village of Gwernymynydd will be extremely grateful to him for the decision that he has taken to provide a pedestrian crossing on the road that is to be straightened out there? None the less, does he accept that it is becoming unreasonably difficult to get consent to pedestrian crossings across trunk roads, even in cases where the need is absolutely paramount? Is there not a need for a reappraisal of priorities here?

Mr. Roberts: I am grateful that the people of Gwernymynydd are pleased

about the pedestrian crossing. I assure my hon. Friend that the safety of pedestrians will remain the yardstick for decisions to be made on pedestrian crossings.

Welsh Language

Mr. Wigley: asked the Secretary of State for Wales what recent initiatives he has taken to encourage the fostering and growth in the use of the Welsh language.

Mr. Nicholas Edwards: I refer the hon. Member to the speech I made at Llanrwst on 15 April. Copies have been placed in the Library of the House and I am having it printed for wider circulation. In this speech, among other things, I announced a major increase in the Government's financial support for the language.

Mr. Wigley: Is the Secretary of State aware that we welcome the statement made in Llanrwst, as far as it goes, and recognise that it goes a substantial step forward? None the less, is he aware that we were also interested to note his words when he said that education through the medium of the Welsh language gave an additional educational experience to a child? In these circumstances, will he give a lead from the Dispatch Box in suggesting to parents of children who are about to enter school that they should actively consider the possibility of sending their children to a bilingual Welsh language primary or nursery school?

Mr. Edwards: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for what he said and for adding his encouraging support to a number of other congratulatory messages that I have received from those who are concerned about the future of the Welsh language. I made it clear in my speech that parental consultation is to be an important part of the future role of education authorities and that they must take full account of the views of parents in this matter. I think that my speech clearly indicated that there was nothing in our experience in education in Wales that suggested that learning Welsh could be harmful to children. In many parts of Wales, it must clearly be of considerable advantage that they should be able to speak Welsh.

Mr. Best: Does my right hon. Friend know of the particular pleasure caused by his announcement that financial provision will be made for the project in Nant Gwrtheyrn for a Welsh language centre


and for teaching the Welsh language in this village?

Mr. Edwards: I am grateful to my hon. Friend. As he knows, it is now up to those involved to raise private sector money to enable me to produce the grant which would enable them to round off the appeal and meet the total. It is now up to the individuals to see whether they can make a success of this project.

Mr. Alan Williams: Does the right hon. Gentleman recollect that many people in Wales felt that the best boost to the Welsh language would be the fourth television channel? As he sees the evidence of lawbreaking around Wales as a result of the Government's decision, is he beginning to realise the damage that the cynical contempt shown by the present Government has done to relations in Wales? How does he explain the fact that the Conservatives fought an election campaign on introducing the fourth channel and then abandoned that decision within two weeks of coming into office? Is he aware that such a blatant abuse of the democratic process plays into the hands of the militants by making ordinary law-abiding people feel cheated?

Mr. Edwards: I have justified and explained the change of policy that we announced in the speech that I made at Llanrwst. Indeed, I have done so in the House of Commons, so I do not need to repeat myself. But I hope that the implications behind the right hon. Gentleman's words from the Dispatch Box just now were not that extremism might in any sense be justified. That would really be a monstrous suggestion.

Council House Sales

Sir Raymond Gower: asked the Secretary of State for Wales how many council-owned dwellings in Wales have been purchased by their tenants during the past 12 months; and whether this constitutes an upturn in the numbers of such sales.

The Under-Secretary of State for Wales (Mr. Wyn Roberts): In 1979 1,187 council-owned dwellings were sold, an increase of 156 compared with the 1978 figure.

Sir R. Gower: Has my hon. Friend any evidence that some of the authorities which are now selling houses are a little inexperienced in this sort of work? Will

his Department give all possible advice and help in appropriate circumstances?

Mr. Roberts: Some 17 authorities in Wales are selling council houses. They are accumulating experience. Obviously, we expect a considerable increase in sales when the Housing Bill is enacted.

Mr. Rowlands: Is not one of the reasons why the hon. Gentleman expects an increase in the sales of council houses that the Government are forcing up rents to incredible levels? He has already imposed a £2 a week average increase by withdrawing subsidies, and in the next year or two we shall see in the valley communities the £20-a-week council house rent. That might well force people to buy their properties, but it does nothing for the homeless of Wales. Will the hon. Gentleman reconsider the whole of his housing investment programme for the next year?

Mr. Roberts: No, we shall certainly not do that. But the reason why we expect an increase in sales is that under the Housing Bill we are for the first time giving to council tenants a right to buy. From our experience in our constituencies, we know that there are many people who wish to buy their own homes and who have hitherto been denied that opportunity by their councils and local authorities.

Mr. Hooson: Will my hon. Friend make arrangements in areas in which local authorities have opposed this policy to ensure that tenants will have the right to buy their council houses and flats?

Mr. Roberts: There will be no question but that council tenants will have the right to buy once the Housing Bill becomes law.

Mr. Anderson: Has the Under-Secretary seen the warnings from the respected chairman of the Council for the Principality that if the proposed cuts by the Welsh Office of the housing investment programme continue, this will mean a complete halt to council house building in Wales next year? Even if this is only partially true and if council house sales continue, do not the Administration have some concern for those who are at the receiving end—young couples and those on the waiting lists—who will find it increasingly impossible to have a decent roof over their heads?

Mr. Roberts: It is not true that the Government's housing allocations for this year will mean the end of council house building. It is entirely up to the local authorities concerned to decide what they do with the money that has been allocated to them. Hon. Members will know that every authority in Wales has this year been allocated 80 per cent., at least, of its previous year's allocation, as promised by the previous Government in November 1978——

Mr. Rowlands: Making 37 per cent. less.

Mr. Roberts: I hear the hon. Member for Merthyr Tydfil (Mr. Rowlands) objecting from a sedentary position. I assure him that his authority has had 92 per cent. of its allocation for last year.

Mr. Rowlands: In real terms?

Mr. Roberts: Every authority can increase the money allocated to it, by selling council houses.

Mobility of Industry

Mr. Ray Powell: asked the Secretary of State for Wales what estimate he has made of the number of firms which have decided to move, within Wales, from areas which no longer attract development grants to development areas or special development areas.

Mr. Nicholas Edwards: There is no realistic basis on which to make such an estimate. I am aware of only one company which has decided to move within Wales as a result of the changes in assisted area boundaries and the associated changes in regional development grants.

Mr. Powell: Will the Minister inform the House whether the Ofrex company is considering moving, perhaps out of Wales? Will he also bear in mind that in the Ogmore constituency it is expected that we shall have 4,000 redundant steel workers as a result of the rundown by the British Steel Corporation at Port Talbot and that we could very well have a further 5,000 redundant miners within the Ogmore constituency? Will he dispel the rumours about the future of the Wyndham Western colliery in the Nant-y-Moel area of the Ogmore valley, which could mean redundancy there and an

industrial desert in the Ogmore constituency, because in the Ogmore valley it is the only employer of labour?

Mr. Edwards: It is true that Ofrex Engineering Ltd. has written to me arguing that the changes in policy could influence future development at its premises. I have already said a number of times in the House and elsewhere that we are considering the future of the development area status of the areas affected by steel closures. They cover the areas referred to by the hon. Gentleman. Specific mine closures are a matter for the NCB.

Mr. Wigley: Is the Secretary of State aware that, even since his visit to my constituency recently, yet another factory has announced its closure—the Spillers factory near Pwllheli? In those circumstances, is not the time right to look at the whole of regional policy and incentives to see whether a new package can be put together in order to maintain, sustain and develop companies in development areas rather than lose them, which is our current experience?

Mr. Edwards: As the hon. Gentleman knows, although regional incentives have an important role to play, they have not been the answer to his particular part of the United Kingdom in the past. They certainly do not offer an automatic solution to the current difficulties that are faced there. But I have already told the hon. Member that I am carefully considering the representations that have been made to me, and I repeat that assurance.

Job Creation

Mr. Rowlands: asked the Secretary of State for Wales what estimate he has made of the number of new jobs likely to be created in Wales in 1980–81.

Mr. Nicholas Edwards: Nearly 19,000 manufacturing jobs are currently estimated to arise in Wales over the next three to four years from projects which have been allocated Government-financed factories or offered selective financial assistance. About 4,000 of these jobs should materialise within the current year.

Mr. Rowlands: Is not the right hon. Gentleman becoming something of a job charlatan in going around Wales and


speaking of these jobs in the pipeline—18,000 jobs over the next four years—when, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Swansea, West (Mr. Williams) has just pointed out, about 44,000 net redundancies have been notified in a mere 10 months of the present Government? Are not some extra special measures now needed, given the jobs crisis that Wales is facing?

Mr. Edwards: That is why, of course, we have announced special measures. The hon. Gentleman repeatedly seems to cast doubts on these jobs. They are important projects. They are Government-financed and aided projects. They are well spread in Wales. Incidentally, they are only the manufacturing projects resulting from Government financial assistance for factories. In this total no account is taken of other jobs, particularly in the service sector. I give just one example. There are 600 jobs coming to Cardiff through the new AA offices. Plenty of other similar developments are taking place.

Sir Raymond Gower: Is it not a fact that the figures my right hon. Friend has given do not include any natural growth that might occur in existing firms and companies which do not apply for some grant or for some new building?

Mr. Edwards: That is absolutely right, and that is the point that I have just made. They do not include jobs in projects that do not receive financial assistance or are not allocated Government-financed factories: nor do they include jobs in the service industries.

Mr. Barry Jones: What are the prospects for school leavers? Can the right hon. Gentleman name any new projects for the Deeside and Buckley area in northeast Wales?

Mr. Edwards: The Manpower Services Commission hopes to meet the guarantees to school leavers. The hon. Gentleman knows that Shotton has some extremely attractive sites and is one of the best locations in Britain. Projects such as the titanium and Point of Air projects have been announced. The hon. Gentleman asked for specific projects, and I have referred to two.

Mr. Hooson: Does not my right hon. Friend agree that the constant stream of predictions of gloom and doom from the Opposition have done nothing to help

create jobs in Wales for the coming years?

Mr. Edwards: Incitements to industrial action, such as have been made by the Opposition this afternoon, will certainly not help the creation of jobs in Wales in the coming year. I couple that with the previous talk of industrial deserts. Such talk is doing untold harm to Wales and is making the job of creating fresh jobs in Wales much more difficult. I agree with my hon. Friend that such predictions are disgraceful.

Mr. Alec Jones: Does not the right hon. Gentleman accept that if any damage is being done to Wales it is being done by a Government of whom the Secretary of State is a prominent member? Will he accept that some jobs in the pipeline do not materialise and that even when they do they often take longer to materialise than had been envisaged? It is all very well for the Secretary of State to trot around Wales talking about 18,000 jobs when he knows that they should be compared with the 50,000 redundancies that have been announced this year. When are we likely to see a fair match or, as the Prime Minister might say, "a broad balance" between the number of redundancies and the number of jobs created by the Government?

Mr. Edwards: It is pretty cool to be lectured by the right hon. Member from the Dispatch Box about things that do not materialise when jobs are in the pipeline. I have already told the right hon. Gentleman that of the 50,000 notified redundancies 6,000 have been withdrawn. They do not all materialise, either.

West Glamorgan

Mr. Anderson: asked the Secretary of State for Wales what further measures he is considering to meet the jobs crisis in West Glamorgan.

Mr. Nicholas Edwards: I have already announced a major programme of industrial site preparation and advance factory building in West Glamorgan, and my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Industry is reviewing the assisted area grading of the areas affected by job losses at Port Talbot.

Mr. Anderson: Reviewing, reviewing and reviewing. For how long will the Govment dally and fiddle while the economies of the steel areas burn? Were we not promised last December that a decision


on regional development status would be made by the end of January? All the key factors are known. The position is becoming worse and worse. What is the reason for the delay?

Mr. Edwards: All the factors are not known, because agreements have not yet been reached between the British Steel Corporation and the unions. I have repeatedly made clear that we shall announce decisions on regrading very quickly after firm decisions have been made about the future of Port Talbot and Llanwern.

Mr. Alan Williams: I appreciate that the right hon. Gentleman wishes to take account of the decision in the British Steel Corporation, and I would have some sympathy if that were the only possible tragedy confronting West Glamorgan. We are already facing redundancies at Louis Marx and——

Mr. Speaker: Order. I am sorry to interrupt the right hon. Gentleman, but he must ask a question. The right hon. Gentleman is giving information.

Mr. Williams: As long as there is an interrogative in the sentence, it constitutes a question. Is he aware——

Mr. Speaker: Order. The right hon. Gentleman must ask a question.

Mr. Williams: As I was saying, is the right hon. Gentleman aware of job losses apart from those in the steel industry? Is he aware that jobs have been lost among such long-standing employers as Louis Marks and Mettoy in Swansea and that there is a risk to jobs in Metal Box at Neath? Will he make an immediate declaration that West Glamorgan will be given special development area status?

Mr. Edwards: I am aware of other job losses, but I am also aware that current unemployment levels in the area do not justify special development area status. I am sure that it would be in the interests of the right hon. Gentleman's constituents if all the relevant facts were made available before that decision is taken.

Mr. Best: Is my right hon. Friend aware that as a result of the steel strike the average loss per worker was about £1,300? Does he not agree that nobody wins in a strike, particularly one of such

magnitude and duration? Does he not also agree that all the Opposition's protestations about the day of action merely show that they have utterly separated themselves from reality? Is there not now a new understanding that one does not preserve jobs by going on strike?

Mr. Edwards: More tragic than the financial loss is the fact that the strike weakened the BSC even further and made additional job losses more likely. Every strike threatens jobs and that is why it is so wrong and wicked that the right hon. Member for Swansea, West (Mr. Williams) should encourage them.

Council for the Principality

Mr. Alan: Williams asked the Secretary of State for Wales when next he intends to meet the Council for the Principality.

Mr. Nicholas Edwards: I have no immediate plans to meet the Council for the Principality, though I expect to meet its representatives on the Welsh Consultative Council for Local Government Finance when it meets on 15 May.

Mr. Williams: Will the right hon. Gentleman tell us his estimate of the cost of the Clegg award as it affects teachers in Wales? Will he compensate Welsh local authorities for those costs, or does he expect the cost to be met by further cuts in education or by the sacking of teachers?

Mr. Edwards: The right hon. Gentleman would receive a more helpful and detailed answer if he asked a specific rather than a general question. In making their allocation to local authorities, the Government made estimates of the likely cost of a Clegg award. Provision has been made in the financial allocation to local authorities, from which they can plan.

Mr. Alec Jones: Does not the right hon. Gentleman agree that with the cut in the housing improvement programme in Wales of £28·5 million it is impossible for local authorities to complete as many houses next year as they did this year? What message will he give to the Council for the Principality and to the homeless people of Wales when the Government will sell more houses than they are building?

Mr. Edwards: Under the Labour Government there was a declining trend in house building. We have continued those policies and met their guarantee of an 80 per cent. allocation. I have nothing to add to the answer given by my hon. Friend the Under Secretary—[Interruption.] Again, we get an intervention from the hon. Member for Merthyr Tydfil (Mr. Rowlands) from a sedentary position. His local authority has received 92 per cent. of its previous allocation.

Mr. Best: Does not my right hon. Friend agree that, given the percentage of poor housing stock in Wales, the emphasis should be not on new building but on improving the existing housing stock?

Mr. Edwards: My hon. Friend will be aware that we have just announced an important new initiative that will help local authorities to improve houses for sale.

Mr. Wigley: Does not the Secretary of State recognise that 15,000 to 20.000 building workers are unemployed in Wales, that 60,000 families are on waiting lists for council houses and that it is therefore ridiculous to pay people to be out of work?

Mr. Edwards: Jobs will not be created if we cannot reduce public expenditure, public borrowing and interest rates. Such reductions must remain the Government's central objectives.

Self-Employed Persons and Small Firms

Mr Geraint Howells: asked the Secretary of State for Wales if he will take steps to help the self-employed and small firms in Wales during the coming year; and if he will make a statement.

Mr. Nicholas Edwards: The Government in their fiscal and other policies are giving high priority to helping the self-employed and small businesses. My Department and the agencies for which I am responsible recognise the importance of the small business sector in our economy in Wales and will give every possible assistance and encouragement.

Mr. Howells: I am grateful to the Secretary of State for his reply, but I am sure he is aware that many self-employed

people and small firms in Wales are finding life very difficult these days because of high interest rates——

Mr. Russell Kerr: And many other things.

Mr. Howells: The Secretary of State is responsible for Wales on behalf of the Welsh people. Will he take the matter up with the Chancellor of the Exchequer to persuade him to lower the bank interest rate forthwith to help the economy in Wales?

Mr. Edwards: I am glad that I shall have the hon. Gentleman's support in all our measures to reduce public sector borrowing, which is essential if we are to reduce interest rates. I am glad that he regards it as an important priority. I hope that he will also agree that the Chancellor announced an important package of measures for small businesses in the Budget.

Mr. Hooson: In seeking to help small businesses, particularly in Mid-Wales, the area covered by the rural development board, will the Secretary of State discuss with the board the possibility of extending its activities to encourage service businesses no less than manufacturing ones?

Mr. Edwards: I have discussed the encouragement of service ventures with the agency and with the board. Under the Act they have the power to support service industries, and I know that in planning their industrial locations they are taking increasing account of the need for a service element on the sites as well as purely manufacturing development.

Oral Answers to Questions — INDUSTRY

Hosiery and Knitwear Industries

Mr. Greville Janner: asked the Secretary of State for Industry whether he will take steps to assist the hosiery and knitwear industries.

The Under-Secretary of State for Industry (Mr. David Mitchell): The Government's economic policies are designed to deal with the causes of inflation and encourage industries throughout the country to become more competitive and so expand.

Mr. Janner: When the Secretary of State went to Leicester last week and


visited hosiery and knitwear factories, was he told of the deep recession into which those traditional industries are sinking and of the high unemployment among them? Will he do his best to help those industries, not least by ensuring that VAT is not charged on children's clothing and that the tremendously high proposed increases in gas and other fuel prices will be cushioned for them?

Mr. Mitchell: When my right hon. Friend visited the city, he was indeed told of the problems faced by the industries there. He made a careful note of them. I know that he is keenly aware of, and interested in, the problems. The hon. and learned Member's second point, about VAT on children's clothing, is a matter for the Treasury. I shall ensure, as I have on behalf of the clothing industry already, that its views are well understood. The effect of the Government's fuel policies is a matter for the Department of Energy.

Mr. Dalyell: What will be done about the problems that I have raised five times in the House in recent months about origin labelling? Do the Government understand that a sweater such as the one I am wearing may be labelled so as to make one think that it is Shetland wear when, in fact, it may come from Indonesia or Hong Kong? What will the Government do to make it clear where woollen textile imports come from?

Mr. Mitchell: If origin labelling on the garment is incorrect, there is an established procedure for prosecution by the inspectors of the local authorities and, if need be, for confiscation of the goods. If the hon. Gentleman is referring generally to labelling not being provided or being misleading, that is a matter for the Minister for Consumer Affairs.

Post Office (Statutory Monopolies)

Mr. Bruce-Gardyne: asked the Secretary of State for Industry if he is now in a position to make a statement regarding the conclusions of his review of the statutory monopolies enjoyed by the Post Office.

Mr. David Mitchell: My right hon. Friend will be making an announcement as soon as possible.

Mr. Bruce-Gardyne: I am relieved to hear that, because my right hon. Friend was promising us a statement about the monopoly of the mails earlier this year. Can my hon. Friend assure us that when my right hon. Friend makes his statement he will take into account the fact that the Monopolies Commission has now concluded, as if we needed it to tell us, that the monopoly of the mails is acting against the public interest? Will the Minister draw the appropriate conclusions as soon as possible?

Mr. Mitchell: My right hon. Friend will, of course, have noted that point. As for the length of time that it has taken for this matter to be completed, it is complex and I am sure that my hon. Friend will agree that the implications of any decision must be considered carefully.

Mr. Armstrong: Will the Minister remember that any application of the free market philosophy to the Post Office without regard to the social consequences will bring great disadvantage to people in rural areas, particularly areas such as Weardale in my constituency, and that the Post Office must be retained as a great public service for the community and not be subject just to the free market philosophy?

Mr. Mitchell: I am sure that my right hon. Friend will take account of the comments by the right hon. Gentleman but also of the need, both in rural areas and elsewhere, for efficiency in the operation of the postal service.

Mr. Renton: Does my hon. Friend agree that the social consequences of getting mail delivered in rural areas within a day or two instead of 10 days or a fortnight as at present would also be beneficial? Is it his intention to allow private firms to go a little further and to bid for the handling of mail in inner cities and between big cities? Will that be done on a competitive tendering basis?

Mr. Mitchell: These are all matters for the result of the review, though my right hon. Friend will no doubt note what my hon. Friend has said. As for speeding up the process in rural areas, if there are examples of delays of as long as 10 days I hope that my hon. Friend will draw them to my attention or to that of my right hon. Friend.

Oral Answers to Questions — TRADE

Trans-Siberian Container Service

Mr. Lyell: asked the Secretary of State for Trade what steps are being taken, whether through the EEC or otherwise, to combat the damage to free world liner trades between Europe and the Far East arising from the non-commercial rates quoted by the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics for its trans-Siberian container service.

The Under-Secretary of State for Trade (Mr. Norman Tebbit): The first step is to develop a common appreciation among the Governments in Europe and in the Far East of the extent of the threat from the trans-Siberian land bridge. The matter is under discussion within the OECD.

Mr. Lyell: I thank my hon. Friend for that answer. May I ask him to remember that the USSR already takes 30 per cent. of the westbound trade and 24 per cent. of the eastbound trade, according to the General Council of British Shipping, and that urgent action is therefore necessary? What is the next step that my hon. Friend has in mind?

Mr. Tebbit: My hon. Friend refers to certain figures. I think that he should make it plain that it is the Japanese trade about which he is speaking. The next step must be to collect appropriate information, because the information we have is not entirely comprehensive, and then to consider within the Community to what extent the Community as a whole can take any action that it might feel appropriate.

Mr. Robert Atkins: Is this not another example of the Russians subsidising an activity to the detriment of the free world and of Britain in particular?

Mr. Tebbit: Since Russia does not issue financial statistics of such operations, it is difficult to say positively that it is subsidised, but certainly the rates offered raise that suspicion in most people's minds.

Oral Answers to Questions — FOREIGN AND COMMONWEALTH AFFAIRS

British Orchestras (Russian Tours)

Mr. Freud: asked the Lord Privy Seal how many British orchestras have toured the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics under Arts Council or British Council sponsorship; what has been the cost of this sponsorship; and how many Soviet cultural visits have been arranged in each of the last four months.

The Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Mr. Peter Blaker): No British orchestras have toured the USSR and no Soviet cultural visits have been arranged under Arts Council or British Council sponsorship in the last four months. Under the terms of the charter, the Arts Council is not permitted to provide funds for cultural visits and tours outside Britain.

Mr. Freud: The House will be pleased with that reply, because the Minister will know that it is different from the reply that he would have given three months ago. Can he tell us how many tours have been cancelled?

Mr. Blaker: Perhaps the hon. Gentleman will table a question on that point. I cannot answer it off the cuff.

Mr. Greville Janner: Will the Minister take such opportunities as he gets to inform the Soviet authorities that cultural contacts with their country would be much more welcome if they were to grant human rights to people who live there and in particular if they allowed Andrei Sakharov, Ida Nudel and Vladimir Slepak out of exile?

Mr. Blaker: We have made our position clear a number of times on that subject to the Soviet authorities. We particularly deplore the fact that the Soviet authorities are conducting a "clean-up", as they describe it, of the places in which various events connected with the Olympic Games are intended to occur, so that there is no contact between people they regard as undesirable and visitors to the Soviet Union.

Mr. Dalyell: Will the Foreign Office make it clear that the Soviet swimmers who are here at present are welcome?

Mr. Blaker: We take the view that we should set ourselves against events which would enhance Soviet prestige or give the impression that nothing in our relationship with the Soviet Union had changed. That is why we have taken our position on the Olympic Games. The Soviet Government have made it perfectly clear that they intend, if they possibly can, to make a big propaganda bonanza out of the Games.

Mr. English: While the Minister is getting his civil servants to give him a proper brief to answer the hon. Member for Isle of Ely (Mr. Freud), will he include in his comments the orchestras that are sponsored by other organisations and are receiving public money, such as from the BBC?

Mr. Blaker: I am not aware that any orchestras sponsored by the BBC have toured the Soviet Union in recent months. Perhaps the hon. Member for Isle of Ely (Mr. Freud) had in mind the proposed tour by the English Chamber Orchestra. On our advice, that tour was cancelled after the intervention of the British Council. With the assistance of the British Council, the English Chamber Orchestra was able to find other engagements in order to avoid any loss of revenue.

Mr. Faulds: rose——

Mr. Speaker: Order. I shall allow an extra minute at the end of the next series of questions in order to call the Front Bench on this question.

Mr. Faulds: Thank you for accommodating me, Mr. Speaker. Will the Minister accept that this is an area in which we on the Labour side of the House feel that displeasure at Soviet aggression should be made clear by keeping the Soviet Union culturally at arm's length, for a while?

Mr. Blaker: I believe that the Government's policies have had that effect. The Soviet authorities can have no doubt that we have demonstrated to them our displeasure at the events in Afghanistan by terminating various contracts in the cultural field and in other areas.

Oral Answers to Questions — THE ARTS IN WALES

Mr. Best: asked the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster what further measures he intends to stimulate the arts in Wales.

The Under-Secretary of State for Education and Science (Mr. Neil Macfarlane): I refer my hon. Friend to the answer I gave him on 17 March 1980.

Mr. Best: I thank my hon. Friend for that answer and for the commitment that the Government have made to the arts in Wales. Will he look very carefully to see whether Government money gives sufficient opportunity in Wales to Welsh dramatists, artists and producers?

Mr. Macfarlane: I find it difficult to believe that Welshmen are incapable of looking after their own interests, where-ever they may be. I cannot give my hon. Friend the assurance that he seeks, because the Government do not control the grant once it is distributed to the Welsh Arts Council. The use of the grant must remain the council's responsibility.

Mr. Rowlands: Is the hon. Gentleman aware of the growing concern about the future of the Welsh National Youth Orchestra, which has a magnificent track record? Will he save us from the philistines in the Welsh Office?

Mr. Macfarlane: I have a feeling that the hon. Member has made that remark about philistines in the Welsh Office before. I must repeat that there are no philistines in the Welsh Office in the Conservative Administration. The hon. Member's comments are well known. Perhaps he could lend a helping hand in that area by trying to encourage sponsorship from private sources in South Wales.

Mr. Wigley: Is the Minister aware that at district and county level expenditure on sport is six times as high as expenditure on the arts in Wales? This does not mean that expenditure on sport should be cut but means that more should be spent on the arts. Will he look again at the amount that goes to the Arts Council?

Mr. Macfarlane: No, I cannot look again at the amounts that go to the various arts organisations. The Welsh Arts Council receives just over 7 per cent. of the total Arts Council money. The British Film Institute gives in excess of 7 per cent. of its total allocation, and the Crafts Council gives more than 28 per cent. of its total allocation for the United Kingdom. I do not think that that is unfair to Wales.

Oral Answers to Questions — NATIONAL HERITAGE FUND

Mr. Dalyell: asked the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster if he will make a statement on the progress made in the setting up of the National Heritage Fund trustees; and where their headquarters are likely to be.

The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and Leader of the House of Commons (Mr. Norman St John-Stevas): The appointment of Lord Charteris as chairman of the trustees was announced on 16 April. My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister will be announcing the names of other trustees in the very near future. The choice of their headquarters is a matter for the trustees themselves to decide.

Mr. Dalyell: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that at the council meeting of the National Trust for Scotland on Friday a wide welcome was given to the appointment of Martin Charteris? On the basis of only one long conversation with him, when he was the Queen's private secretary, and his active role during proceedings on the National Heritage Bill, I believe that he is an extremely good choice. May I express the hope that the trust decides to set up not on the sixteenth floor of some convenient building but in a building where restoration work can be done and an example set?

Mr. St. John-Stevas: On behalf of Lord Charteris, I am extremely grateful for the hon. Member's kind words. On behalf of myself, I am also grateful, and I am sure I speak also for the Prime Minister when I say that she will be delighted that her appointment has commanded the hon. Member's support.
The question of the building is a matter for the trustees, but I entirely agree with the hon. Member. We do not want to see them in some hideous tower block. It would be appropriate for them to have their headquarters in a building of historic interest and aesthetic worth.

Mr. Hugh Fraser: May I also join in congratulating the Government on appointing Lord Charteris as the chairman? Will my right hon. Friend draw the attention of Lord Charteris to the importance of the documents and manuscripts held up and down the country by county council muniment rooms and

other organisations? There is a great danger that these documents, which are so important to scholars, might be lost. Already, the Warwickshire documents have been sold to the United States, and certainly in my county of Staffordshire we believe that these manuscripts should be protected.

Mr. St. John-Stevas: I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for his congratulations. I shall certainly draw the attention of Lord Charteris to his points. Documents are just as much a part of the national heritage as buildings and objects.

Mr. Faulds: Ditto, ditto in relation to Lord Charteris. Has the right hon. Gentleman drawn the Prime Minister's attention to the fact that since the starting date for the National Heritage Fund on 1 April, £126,000 has so far been lost and that for every day's delay in the announcement of the names of the trustees another £6,000 is lost? Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that that is the price of an important painting? When can we have the announcement of the names of these trustees?

Mr. St. John-Stevas: As I have indicated, the Prime Minister is considering the matter and an announcement is imminent. Changes were made for the arrangements for the appointment of trustees at a very late stage in the National Heritage Bill, as the hon. Gentleman will know, although he was unable, due to indisposition, to be present on that occasion.
I thank the hon. Member for his congratulations. Never in my 20 years in Parliament have I been greeted with such universal acclaim.

Mr. Cormack: May I associate myself with the congratulations of the hon. Member for West Lothian (Mr. Dalyell) on the appointment of the Provost of Eton to be chairman of the trustees? May I urge my right hon. Friend to urge the Prime Minister to consider as a matter of the utmost urgency the comments made by the hon. Member for Warley, East (Mr. Faulds)? It is of the utmost importance that these trustees should be able to function within the next 10 days.

Mr. St. John-Stevas: I shall certainly pass on that remark to my right hon.


Friend. I thank my hon. Friend for his encomium, which I add to the enormous bouquet that has been presented to me today from all parts of the House.

Mr. English: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker——

Mr. Speaker: Will the hon. Member wait just two minutes?

Oral Answers to Questions — WORKS OF ART (SALES)

Mr. Canavan: asked the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster what is the policy of Her Majesty's Government on the sale of works of art by public bodies.

Mr. St. John-Stevas: The museums and galleries for which I am responsible have very restricted powers to sell items from their collections, and these powers mainly affect duplicates and objects no longer of use. The powers of other public bodies vary widely, but I am sure that those responsible for them are well aware of the strong arguments against disposing of items, however acquired.

Mr. Canavan: Will the Minister intervene to stop the Glasgow university from selling off 11 Whistler paintings to try to raise £320,000 for a new art gallery? Since Government cuts in university budgets are behind this philistine proposal to sell off part of the nation's cultural heritage, will the Minister consider giving extra financial assistance to the university to help? In any event, will he place a ban on the export of those paintings?

Mr. St. John-Stevas: I sympathise with what the hon. Gentleman is saying. However, the universities are not my responsibility but that of my right hon. and learned Friend the Secretary of State for Education and Science. The art gallery is not his responsibility, because it is an independent art gallery. I am pleased to be able to tell the hon. Gentleman that, subject to representations, the sale has been postponed in an effort to find funds from another source. It is a matter for the university authorities, and if they sell some of those minor paintings it would be within the terms of the bequest.

Mr. Cormack: While I acknowledge that such action would be within the terms of the bequest, does my right hon. Friend accept that there is a wide measure

of support for the sentiments advanced by the hon. Member for West Stirlingshire (Mr. Canavan) on this matter? Will he, perhaps, put in a good word with the trustees of the National Heritage Memorial Fund, when they are appointed, on behalf of Glasgow art gallery, so that it may be an early recipient of the generosity of the fund?

Mr. St. John-Stevas: That is an interesting suggestion. However, it would be a mistake for me to start putting in good words for various applicants to the fund, because that would put both me and them in an invidious position. I understand that the Glasgow art gallery has applied to the fund, and I wish it well.

Mr. Faulds: In view of the prevailing economic climate, and the pressures for disposal and dispersal, would not the right hon. Gentleman consider it advisable to set up a committee to look into the sale of works of art by both public and semi-public bodies, including the Churches? I would welcome a carefully contemplated reply rather than a speedy, witty one.

Mr. St. John-Stevas: Careful contemplation and wit are not necessarily contradictory as the hon. Gentleman thinks. I shall consider what he has said, but there are so many committees in the arts world at the moment, that whether another committee is necessary is open to doubt.

Mr. David Price: Does my right hon. Friend agree that in the case of the galleries and museums over which he has even the remotest control it is reasonable that people running them should be free to buy and sell to fill gaps in their collections, and that they should not sit with pictures in their cellars that are redundant, and for which there is no gallery space?

Mr. St. John-Stevas: What my hon. Friend has said is unexceptionable. They are, and should be, free to do so. But, like everyone else in charge of art objects, they are trustees for the nation and the heritage.

NORTHERN IRELAND (SECURITY)

The Minister of State, Northern Ireland Office (Mr. Michael Alison): I will, with permission, Mr. Speaker, make a statement on behalf of my right hon. Friend


the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, who is in Belfast today consulting his security advisers about the unsuccessful mortar attack on Newry police station during this weekend.
On Saturday 19 April at lunch time an explosion occurred in the gable wall of Newry RUC station. A minute later an explosion occurred on a lorry parked some 100 yards away and screened from the police station by intervening buildings. The lorry had been hijacked by holding a family at gunpoint at Crossmaglen from 10 am until about the time of the explosion.
Investigation revealed a number of loaded mortar tubes, which the Army successfully disarmed. Twenty-six civilians and two policemen were injured. I am glad to say that, with one exception—a boy who suffered a broken leg—the injuries sustained were not serious, and those who were injured were quickly released from hospital.
I cannot express too strongly the revulsion felt by the Government, and, I feel sure, by hon. Members on both sides of the House, as well as by the public at large, at this callous attack, which put sharply at risk the lives and limbs of ordinary members of the public. Needless to say, intensive police investigations into this outrage are continuing.
I extend my profound apologies to hon. Members to whom the courtesy of advance notice of a statement is usually given for the failure of the Government on this occasion to produce the statement as rapidly as is normal. That was because we wished to get the most up-to-date information from Belfast, and the lines there are sometimes interrupted.

Mr. John: Will the hon. Gentleman accept the Opposition's abhorrence of all the crimes committed during the last week, including the murder of a former UDR member and the destruction of hotels, to which no reference was made in his statement? Important though damage to property is, particularly in denying employment, at a time of high unemployment in Northern Ireland, does he agree that it is clearly subordinate to the death and injury caused? Will he convey our deep sympathy to the bereaved and to the injured?
I should like to put a series of questions to the Minister. Clearly, some of

the crimes—for example, one of the hotel explosions last Tuesday—originated in the Republic. Will the Secretary of State's talks help in a practical way to strengthen cross-border security? Is it not disturbing that the attack on the police station at Newry was launched from a not inconspicuous vehicle by a timing device? Does the hon. Gentleman know how long it was parked at the site before the explosions occurred? Does he accept that there is a case either for preventing parking within a certain distance of a police station or for regular checks by the police to prevent vehicles being parked in such a perimeter, so as to deny a repetition of this incident and to deny terrorists the opportunity of setting off explosions by timing devices?

Mr. Alison: I am obliged to the hon. Gentleman for his words of condolence, which I am sure are echoed in every part of the House and which are certainly shared by the Government for those who were damaged or injured in this senseless outrage.
I assure the hon. Gentleman that the subject of security was touched upon during the recent exchanges between my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State and Ministers in the Republic. The talks were helpful and constructive.
I cannot give the hon. Gentleman precise information about the time during which the lorry was parked on the site from which the damage was done. That is part of the ongoing investigation by the police. In my statement I indicated that the hijacking occurred at 10 o'clock that day, although information about the hijacking did not come through until after the outrage. The lorry was parked some distance from the target, with intervening buildings screening it. The question of regular investigation of suspiciously parked vehicles is part of the regular work of the security forces. I cannot say until after the investigations have been completed whether routine checks had been made on the vehicle.

Mr. J. Enoch Powell: Is the Minister of State aware that nothing can excuse the Government's failure to inform the right hon. Member for the constituency concerned that there was an intention to make a statement today? Is he further aware that the gain, if any, of a few minutes' additional information is not sufficient compensation for the failure to observe the


normal courtesy of the House in making a statement available 20 minutes or so in advance to those primarily concerned? Are the Government aware that the greatest contribution that they can make to the prevention of a repetition of these and similar events is to desist from behaviour that conveys to the IRA the message that the status and future of Northern Ireland might be radically altered?

Mr. Alison: There is no one to whom I should be more inclined to extend the courtesy of providing information about such events as these than the right hon. Gentleman. I hope that he will accept my profound apologies that he was not informed in advance of the statement. I asked my private office to ensure that all right hon. and hon. Members to whom such a statement might be relevant were given notice in advance. I assumed that the information reached the right hon. Gentleman. I apologise for the lapse.
The right hon. Gentleman also mentioned not having been given an advance copy of the statement. I have already apologised for that. My decision was that the latest and most relevant information should be provided, and there was some difficulty in communications.
I note the right hon. Gentleman's point about the wider aspects of the political situation in the Province. It is in the minds of the Government at all times to conduct political and security operations with a view to maximising the effectiveness of the security of innocent members of the public in the Province. In our judgment, nothing in the Government's present policy in any way undermines the security and defence effort that we are making in the Province.

Rev. Ian Paisley: I welcome the Minister's statement, but does he understand that the people of Northern Ireland will find it strange that he makes a statement when no lives are taken—although it was no doubt a serious incident—but when lives are taken and young police officers are brutally murdered and people are concerned no statement is forthcoming? Does he accept that the people of Northern Ireland will wish to identify with the statement by the official Opposition spokesman and that our condolences and sympathy go to all those people who have been bereaved?
Will the Minister tell the House what steps he will take to stop the genocide of Protestants in the border areas of Fermanagh, where the most prominent Protestant citizens are being gunned down week by week until farmsteads and homesteads are bereft of fathers and where families are being wiped out systematically? What will the Minister do about that serious situation?

Mr. Alison: It is not fair to say that we do not make statements except on odd occasions when individual lives are lost. We made a statement today because of the exceptional character of the potential threat. We make statements frequently when individual lives or groups of lives are lost. It is not the Government's normal practice to make a statement on the occasion of each death that occurs in the Province. We publish regular figures. The regular opportunities to question Ministers and our regular debates on security make possible broad statements and information. We give information to the House when we judge that it is particularly relevant. We often give information when individuals are killed.
I note the hon. Member's reference to the security position in Fermanagh. The Government are acutely aware that one life lost is one too many and is unacceptable. The security operations in Fermanagh and elsewhere are the most considered, the most effective and most determined possible within the logistical limitations placed upon any Government when conducting such operations. We cannot always guarantee that we shall prevent each potential murderer from committing a murder. It is beyond the wit of any security force to prohibit every assassination. We prevent and inhibit many and we apprehend and imprison many of the terrorists who commit the murders. I am certain that we shall capture the men responsible for the murders to which the hon. Gentleman referred.

Mr. Dalyell: Have the Government identified the origin of the mortar shells? Were they home-made? If not, what was their country of origin?

Mr. Alison: That is a subject of the investigations. Although I tried to give the House the latest possible information, which is one reason why some of the material was late in being presented to the


House, I am not yet able to answer that question definitely.

Mr. Peter Robinson: I join in the expression of revulsion at the horrific act by the IRA in Newry. Does the Minister accept that such acts fail to cause death more because of the bad way in which they are handled by the IRA than because of the good security that the Government are providing for the people of Northern Ireland? Can he confirm that the origin of the explosives used at Newry was the Republic of Ireland? What steps is he taking to ensure that no further substances cross the border?
What is the latest news on investigations into the murder of Frederick Victor Wilson, the young police reservist who was killed in a Belfast car park? What progress has been made in finding his killers? Will the hon. Gentleman pass on to those responsible the appreciation of Northern Ireland people of the Army bomb disposal officers, who carried out a magnificent task in defusing the remaining cartridges?

Mr. Alison: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman. I shall convey his thanks to the officers and men concerned. However, I dispute that the blundering inefficiency of the terrorists has led to the relief of innocent people in the Province from the effects of terrorism. Both in the Republic and in the Province, the work of the security forces on both sides of the border has resulted in considerable finds of arms, explosives and ammunition and in the inhibition or aborting of a number of potential attacks on the public which but for the efficiency of covert investigatory work by the security forces might have resulted in explosions. The steady downward trend in attacks in the Province in

recent years and months is the result of successful work by the security forces involving the police and the Army.
I am unable to give the origin of the explosives. That question is being investigated. I shall try to give the House the information when it is available.
We cannot yet give the hon. Gentleman the good news that the murderer to whom he referred has been apprehended. We have a steady and increasing success rate in the detection and apprehension of terrorists. A large number are in prison. I have every reason to hope that we shall get hold of the murderer.

Mr. McQuade: Is the Minister aware of the continuing attacks on Protestant people by Republican gangs in the Dun-cairn area? Will he list the steps that he is prepared to take to provide proper security for the area, where in the past week there has been no security at all?

Mr. Alison: This attack bore no relation to the community background, religion or faith or the views or sympathies of any of the people who were injured. It was an indiscriminate attack and, like all or most terrorist attacks in the Province, no regard was paid to the character, age, sex or background of the individuals who were attacked and injured. I cannot give a full catalogue of the very large number of techniques, methods and successful operations carried out in order to inhibit attacks, but very large numbers of successful operations in this direction are carried out. But, as I told the House in answer to an earlier question, we cannot guarantee total immunity from terrorist attacks to every individual in the Province, given the nature of an open and democratic society and the necessity to allow a good deal of personal freedom.

SUPPLY

[14TH ALLOTTED DAY]—considered.

NORTH-WEST ENGLAND

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn—[Mr. Cope.]

Mr. Speaker: I remind the House that the two important debates on which we are about to embark are both abbreviated. I hope that hon. Members who are called will bear that in mind.

Mr. Frank R. White: It is a privilege to open this debate on the problems of the North-West region. But I can assure the House that there will be very little pleasure gained by cataloguing our needs and the Government's apparent inability to respond to them.
The North-West region consists of the counties of Lancashire, Cheshire, Greater Manchester and Merseyside. It has a population of about 6·5 million, giving a population density of 889 people per square kilometre, the highest regional density in Great Britain, and Merseyside county's population density of 2,385 persons per square kilometre is exceeded only by that of London.
To many people, the North-West is epitomised by clogs, cobbled streets and factory chimneys—the land of Ena Sharpies and endless Coronation Streets. They are there all right, as well as the warmth of community character and the homeliness and friendliness that they represent. We have industrial dereliction, but we also have some of the finest natural resources in the country, and our region can match most others in scenic beauty, from Pennine hillside to coastal plain, and we can boast a range of sporting and cultural activities that cannot be exceeded in their quality.
But, of course, we are rightly viewed as one of the centres of the Industrial Revolution. Last Friday, I had the opportunity to address the annual conference of the Amalgamated Textile Workers' Union at Blackpool. It is a union that in its 1925 heyday represented nearly 300,000 textile operatives in Lancashire but whose

membership is now, regrettably, reduced to a mere 48,000. We have had a loss of jobs in this industry of more than 10,000 per year for each of the past 15 years, and the uncontrolled and seemingly unconcerned contraction of this industry is a concern to the North-West extending far wider than textiles.
Other hon. Members will wish to expand on these problems. But it must be said that industry in the North-West looks to the Government for a more positive policy than the one extended at present to the textile industry.
As a forerunner of the Industrial Revolution, our region's plant and equipment is older than most. Therefore, the regeneration of the industrial base of the region is our highest priority. Textiles, footwear and leather, paper, engineering and the unplanned fabric of society that emerged as these industries grew all require a degree of investment that will not be forthcoming from the private sector. I say that with confidence for, in the past, the Manchester Free Traders failed, the Governments of the 1950s controlled by the Conservative Party failed, and the Conservative Government of 1970–74 failed. All failed to obtain for the North-West the transfusion needed so desperately for us to build anew.
Our present needs cannot be fobbed off with some Conservative Central Office clichés such as "restoring incentives" or "re-establishing self-help" or by letting so-called dying industries go down the plug hole on the basis that new ones somehow will take their place—from where and by whom we know not. The Conservative Party really ought to talk to the sharp end of industry—to the plant managers, the sales managers and the marketing men. The Government should ask them which other country in the Western world is embarking on this lunacy of free market forces and non-Government involvement. Our international competitors are laughing at us all the way to our own dole queues and bankruptcy courts.
Every other trading nation gives its industries support. The Government ought to ask the salesmen who go out selling exports and the marketing men who explore new export markets what tricks French, German and American


companies get up to with their own Governments. It seems that we alone are intent on this lemming-like attitude of self-inflicted industrial suicide, and the fall guys for this policy are to be our industrial regions, including the North-West.
The region deserves better treatment than this, especially from this Government. It deserves it if for no other reason than the past wealth generated in the North-West, which has never been fairly reinvested back into the region but has gone outside to create standards of life for people in other regions that we in the North-West are now denied.
The North-West region accounts for 11·3 per cent. of the United Kingdom's gross national product. Our industries contribute on a massive scale to the nation's exports. Last year, textiles alone contributed £1,700 million to exports, and the Government's treatment of the region's greater potential is to launch an attack on the region that can only be described as an economic blitzkreig. Slashing to the left and slashing to the right like some latter-day Lord Cardigan—and he had the wrong policy at Balaclava—the Secretary of State for Industry has removed intermediate area assistance from 21 travel-to-work areas in the region. The working population in assisted areas will drop from 70·1 per cent., which was Labour's recognition of the problem, to 6·6 per cent. under the present Government.
Still reeling from this type of attack, the region suffers further from the attentions of the twin-headed dragon—the Secretaries of State for the Environment and for Employment. One is wet and the other is hot. It is easy to tell the difference. The one takes away opportunities for the training and retraining of our work force. The other ensures by his public expenditure cuts that life in the region will be as unbearable as possible, with local authority services cut to the bone and those in need suffering the utmost deprivation.
Right hon. and hon. Members may feel that these words are over-emotional. But they do little to emphasise our problems. We in the North-West have the third highest infant mortality rate and the second highest death rate, and our female life expectancy is the lowest in the country. The number of general practitioners working in the region is below

the national average, as are the numbers of dentists and available hospital beds. Health Service expenditure in the North-West averages about £115 per head. In the Thames region it is £139. That means that annually the North-West falls behind the Thames region to the tune of £120 million.
I do not suggest that the Thames region should take a cut. I have no doubt that it has its problems. But under the Labour Government's policy of implementing the resource allocation working party's report, we were led to believe and were assured by Ministers that within a 10-year period the North-West would achieve comparability with the Thames region. The recent public expenditure cutbacks in the Health Service have put the North-West back 30 years. That is unacceptable.

Mrs. Elaine Kellett-Bowman: Mrs. Elaine Kellett-Bowman (Lancaster) rose——

Mr. White: The hon. Lady can make her own comment if she catches Mr. Speaker's eye. My hon. Friends are also waiting to speak.
The Health Service situation is unaceptable. Some of our people will die before they receive the basic service now extended to people in many other parts of the country. In education, the region has the third highest pupil-teacher ratio and the third lowest expenditure per pupil.
In many other instances—I am sure that my hon. Friends will elucidate them to the House—the material quality of life experienced in the North-West falls behind the services enjoyed by other regions. It is a wonder that the tolerance and the good humour of the region's people have not been broken before now. I feel bound to warn the Government that their actions over the past 11 months have stretched the tolerance of the most moderate.
What can a person do when he is denied a job? There are 212,000 unemployed at present and the region has one of the highest unemployment vacancy ratios in the country, at 12·7 per cent. The industries in which people have given a lifetime of service are being decimated by this Government's action, or lack of it. Their representatives in the trade union movement are denied any dialogue to represent their views with the Government, or are permitted a dialogue only under the most grovelling of terms. All


this would be bad enough. But, on top, their rent and rates are forced up. They are paying prescription charges that have increased 500 per cent. in 11 months. Their children suffer school meal price increases, and their elderly parents are denied the human dignity in their old age for which all have fought.
Almost everything for which the typical moderate, industrious North-West person has worked all his life is now being attacked and eroded. For what purpose? It is so that the Government can indulge themselves in free marketeerism and a transfer of wealth to pay off the affluent.
I have to tell the Prime Minister that she and her Government are playing a dangerous game. They are pushing people too far and, in so doing, nurturing the seeds of disruption.
This debate takes place on a motion for the Adjournment of the House. Out of consideration to my hon. Friends and to Conservative Members who wish to contribute, I shall leave my hon. Friends to expand and develop the arguments that have been raised. I am sure that the Opposition would have preferred a more substantial motion. In asking my hon. Friends not to divide the House, out of consideration for our Yorkshire colleagues, whose debate follows ours, I assure them that the Government will receive the censure motion they richly deserve. That will take place on Thursday 1 May, when the industrial regions of this country, prominently led by the North-West, will vote against the reckless folly that is being perpetrated against them.
The Prime Minister said recently, in an analogy, that it was foolish to change a course of treatment because everyone felt ill after a major operation. On 1 May, the message is clear. The North-West is receiving the wrong treatment, in the wrong hospital and, above all, from the wrong doctor.

Sir Walter Clegg: It is a pleasure for me to welcome to the Opposition Dispatch Box the hon. Member for Bury and Radcliffe (Mr. White), whom I find very agreeable. However, I did not find his speech today agreeable. His remarks were a gross exaggeration of the problems faced in the North-West. I do not believe that this debate has done the North-West any good.
The hon. Member seemed to imply that the problems of the North-West suddenly arose when a Conservative Government were elected to power last May. He also implied that the North-West suffered only under a Tory Government. It is about time that he and other Opposition Members began to realise that they have a great responsibility. Many Labour councils in the North-West have a responsibility. It is true that there are problems in the North-West. We get nowhere by complaining in the manner of the hon. Gentleman.
The hon. Gentleman complains that under a Tory Government unemployment has risen. But it increased under his own Government. Where was his voice then? Where were the censure motions? Under the Labour Government, unemployment in the North-West doubled. I took the hon. Gentleman's speech to be a plea for more Government aid for the region. We should realise that Government financial help is not in itself the solution.

Mr. John Evans: Will the hon. Gentleman tell the House that his constituency, unlike mine and many of those of my hon. Friends, did not lose its assisted area status during the review? Was that not a question of political rather than economic consideration?

Sir W. Clegg: It was most certainly not that. The hon. Gentleman will find, if he looks at the statistics, that there is a high and continuing rate of unemployment in the Fylde area. The hon. Gentleman should also study the situation in the adjoining area of Wigan, which was given development area status under the Conservative Government—a status denied by the Labour Government when they were in office. If hon. Members believe that pouring in Government money can solve the problems of the North-West, they will believe anything. The facts show it is not true.
Hon. Members should consider the help that has been made available, both in the past and now, to Merseyside. That has not solved Merseyside's problems. It cannot do so. The policy of the Conservative Government in setting industry free through new enterprise zones in the North-West will have far greater effect than pouring in Government money in subsidy after subsidy. Those who pay the subsidies are the business men who


are themselves in difficulties in the North-West.

Mr. Jack Straw: The hon. Gentleman condemns Government assistance for the North-West. Is he proposing that such aid should be ended for the Fylde area?

Sir W. Clegg: Not in the least. I will give the hon. Gentleman my explanation. There is a case for Government help. But there is no case for saying that Government help is the only answer to our problems. The ability of the Northwest to compete and the ability of its small industries to expand is the key to the situation. This has been seen. There are some forms of Government aid that I welcome. Those of us who live and work in the North-West know that the advance factories introduced under the previous Government have been a major success. That is especially true of the small factories. They are taken up, in my constituency, almost as soon as they are off the planning board. This process helps. It does no good, however, to portray the North-West as a downtrodden area. How can people be persuaded to come to the area if we are constantly decrying ourselves?

Mr. Robert Kilroy-Silk: Mr. Robert Kilroy-Silk (Ormskirk)rose——

Sir W. Clegg: I do not think I shall give way. Many hon. Members wish to speak. I promised Mr. Speaker that if I caught his eye I would be brief.
The hon. Member for Bury and Radcliffe attacked the actions of the Conservative Government in the North-West. I suggest that Opposition Members should ensure that Labour local authorities in the North-West look after their expenditure and avoid rate rises. One factor stopping people from coming to the North-West is high rates. The higher rates rise, the worse the situation becomes. I also dispute what the hon. Gentleman said about talent in the area. If, with the help of the Government, that talent can be liberated, we shall succeed, but not if we continue to rely entirely on Government handouts.

Mr. James A. Dunn: In following the hon. Member for Blackpool, South—[Hon. Members: "North Fylde".] Well, the names change

so rapidly. I do not share the views of the hon. Member for North Fylde (Sir W. Clegg). Indeed, I take a different view. I believe that what is happening in the North-West ought to be highlighted in order to give the Government some opportunity to rethink their programme and to re-evaluate what is happening there because of the effect and immediate impact of their policy.
Merseyside is an area in the North-West conurbation which is suffering gravely from rising unemployment. The rate of increase is alarming. In particular, youth employment is suffering greatly. Every day, each of the constituencies on Merseyside is reporting not only redundancy but a loss of jobs, which may not return for years to come. The Government's present policies, coupled with high inflation and high interest rates, are not assisting small businesses to relocate and to take up the slack which has been caused by large-scale industry diversifying its production and manufacturing standards. There is no way in which that can be done without a reappraisal and a change of Government policy.
One of the major difficulties affecting Merseyside at present is that employment programmes, especially youth employment programmes, are severely restricted and curtailed and in some instances reduced. The impact and effect will be long felt. Indeed, some young people have been on the unemployment register for more than 18 months. It looks as though the future will be very bleak. Vocational and educational courses have been restricted, and the colleges of further education are feeling the impact almost immediately. The special temporary employment programmes have not eased the situation. There must be some review and reversal of that policy if the trend of youth unemployment in the area is to be reversed.
I welcomed the announcement of the establishment of the Liverpool inner city partnership scheme. I have carefully followed some of the announcements that have been made by the partnership committee. I note that it talked in terms of resources being made available, that the programme would be far-reaching and that it would cover every aspect of family life in the area, ranging from the environment, housing, domestic and social services to employment. But I have yet to


see any tangible evidence that the Government intend to make the inner city partnership programme a realistic activity.

Mr. Anthony Steen: Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the curious thing about the partnership scheme is that it excludes private industry, members of the community and private enterprise? It is solely a Government machine, comprising central Government, local government and the health authority. Does not the hon. Gentleman agree that the public sector alone will not revive the inner areas?

Mr. Dunn: No, I do not agree. There is ample opportunity for a further extention of the partnership schemes to include the very categories which the hon. Gentleman has mentioned. However, until one is successful, it would be foolish to transfer and revamp that system. I want to see something tangible, but, unfortunately, I have not seen that yet. It has been my experience that private industry has failed Merseyside. Opportunities were made available long before the introduction of the partnership scheme. That failure is marked on the memories and minds of my constituents, and I am sure that the hon. Gentleman must receive similar reports from his own constituency.
The urban development corporation is also a Government-inspired body, but as yet nothing tangible has resulted. No resources of any substance have been made available to the corporation. Reference has been made to free enterprise zones. What is free about them? All that will happen is that there will be less restriction on customs and on local authority legislation, development and planning. Those are the only benefits which will be enjoyed by the free enterprise zones, but at what cost? What will probably happen is that many existing industries which are now located outside the zones will be clamouring to book a place to get inside them, with no consequential benefits to anyone in the area.
I do not say that we should not try free enterprise zones, but if they are brought into being they should be carefully monitored. There should be no exploitation. Existing legislation should be applied. Protection for those who will

be employed within the zones should be assured, and the zones should not result in the creation of mini-Hong Kongs or Taiwans, which is what the entrepreneurs think will happen when they are eventually declared. I am sure that the hon. Member for Liverpool, Wavertree (Mr. Steen) will join me in objecting if that happens.
Anxiety and concern are now being expressed about the free enterprise zones, not least by those whom the hon. Gentleman claims have been overlooked in the inner city partnership scheme—small industries and private individuals who want to invest on Merseyside. At present, aid is urgently and badly needed in respect of the port and docks. Last week, private legislation went through the House which, in effect, gives financial support to other ports, particularly the port of London. Yet when Merseyside, Liverpool and Manchester are involved—Merseyside is the gateway to the Manchester docks—no immediate response comes from the Government to give financial support in those difficult circumstances. There is no promise that that will be considered with any sympathy or favour. Yet when the same problem occurs elsewhere there is an immediate clamour for support.
I believe that Merseyside has suffered grievously from the recent public expenditure cutbacks. The employment programmes have been seriously jeopardised. The construction and building industry has been seriously affected. The total programme for the inner city partnership scheme needs complete revision if Merseyside is to receive any benefit. Merseyside does not require sympathy. It requires action. Private industry has never been able to fulfil the needs and requirements of the area. Unless the Government reverse the present trend as well as their policy, the impact on Merseyside will be grievous and job losses and unemployment will rise even higher than they are in the alarming situation that I have presented to the House.

Mrs. Elaine Kellett-Bowman: While congratulating the hon. Member for Bury and Radcliffe (Mr. White) on his elevation to the Opposition Front Bench, I am bound to say that I wish that he had made a better fist of it in his first speech. If we want industry


to come to the North-West, the very last thing we want to do is to perpetuate the Ena Sharpies image, as the hon. Gentleman did, for which my hon. Friend the Member for North Fylde (Sir W. Clegg) rightly chastised him.
We all agree that there is no disputing the fact that for many years the Northwest has been starved of resources compared with both the more prosperous South-East and, latterly, under the Labour Government—the hon. Gentleman cannot dispute these facts—the more politically sensitive areas of Scotland and Wales, without whose votes there would never be another Labour Government in this country. Unemployment in the area has consistently been above the national average, and it got steadily worse during the period of Socialist rule. As my hon. Friend said, it more than doubled and in my constituency it trebled. What was even worse was that the ratio of unemployment to job vacancies was higher in the North-West than anywhere else.
In my constituency the figure was not 12·7 per cent. It was 32·7 per cent. under the Labour Government. So concerned were the Conservative MPs in the North-West in the middle of 1976 that we undertook a study of the problems of the area. We concentrated our attention on small firms. We did that, first, because such firms were of overriding importance to the region. In the early part of the decade an average of 85 per cent. of all manufacturing firms in the North-West were small by the Bolton committee definition of firms employing fewer than 200 people. In the North-West, on average, 30 per cent. of all employment is in small firms. In constituencies such as mine and that of my hon. Friend the Member for North Fylde it is more substantial than that.
We concentrated on small firms, secondly, because they have a relatively greater impact on lowering unemployment when there is an upturn in the economy. Small firms cannot afford to hoard labour in the bad times and they are more flexible and quicker off the mark to take advantage of new opportunities when they crop up.
Firms whose views we sought complained of unnecessary and time-consuming form filling, the paralysing effect of

the so-called Employment Protection Act 1975—the firms always referred to that Act as the "Employment Destruction Act"—the disincentive effect of the highest starting rate for income tax in the whole world, the break-up of family businesses caused by capital transfer tax biting at a low level, the lower starting point of VAT and the crippling burden of public expenditure. Those were the reactions we experienced from both sides of industry—from trade unions and employers.
All these deterrents to small industries have to be tackled. Most of them have been tackled in our two Budgets and other measures that have been brought forward in parallel. It is no mean achievement for the Under-Secretary of State—who I am happy to see is with us today—to have lightened the inherited bureaucratic burden on small industries by abolishing approximately half a ton of the forms that those industries previously had to fill in.
It was a bold and absolutely necessary move on the part of the Chancellor of the Exchequer to slash the standard rate to 30p and the top rate of tax to the level that obtains in the rest of the Western world. Had my right hon. and learned Friend not done that we would have been unable to prevent the drift of skilled workers and managers abroad.
The provisions in the Budget to help the establishment and expansion and handing on of small firms by raising the limit of capital transfer tax—attracting money to those firms and encouraging the building of small workshop-type factories—are the best tonic we could have had.
On the face of it, in Lancaster we should be on our uppers. In the past 10 years we had had no fewer than 2,604 redundancies and when the new regional boundaries were being drawn our unemployment rate was well over 6 per cent. That is why we retained our intermediate area status. Over the past several months one of our most important employers, Storley Bros., declared, first, 160 workers and then 52 workers redundant.—[Interruption.] The hon. Member for Newton (Mr. Evans) is merely pointing out that my constituency has an effective Member and his has not. Despite those redundancies, our unemployment rate will still be below what it was a year ago. I


am convinced that this is because we have bent over backwards to attract small firms by providing tiny, seed-bed factories—the council provided them—at rents which a man and wife starting up an industry could afford.
Many of those small firms are now at the point of take-off and the Budget measures will help them to expand. However, I am bound to admit that a substantial and widespread take-off is unlikely until interest rates come down. But many firms are still adversely affected—on this point I agree with the hon. Member for Bury and Radcliffe—by unfair imports from the United States. A close monitoring of these imports is essential, particularly in relation to the footwear and textile industries which are also hit by dumped imports from Eastern European countries which will send goods over here at any price in order to obtain hard currency.
The European regional fund and the European Investment Bank have greatly assisted the North-West over the past few years and I am sorry that the hon. Member for Newton has left his place. The European regional fund has given huge grants to local authorities for infrastructure projects and we in Lancaster and Morecambe have been lucky in receiving large grants for tourist infrastructure projects. Those grants have helped to keep down the rates. As my hon. Friend the Member for North Fylde pointed out, high rates are a deterrent to industrial expansion.
The European Investment Bank has been of great assistance in lending money at cheap fixed interest rates, thus enabling industry to plan investment programmes with greater certainty. We in Lancaster and Morecambe are grateful along with my hon. Friends the Members for North Fylde, for Blackpool, South (Mr. Blaker) and my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Blackpool, North (Mr. Miscampbell) in that we are to retain our assisted area status. However, the loss of that status to large areas of the North-West will adversely affect us all by cutting down our access to the European regional fund and to the European Investment Bank. We will be affected overall as a county.
I hope that when the regional fund regulations are revised a way will be

found to enable particular black spots in the North-West to continue to receive help through schemes which are vitally important to the whole region. This applies particularly to infrastructure projects, the need for which goes across boundaries.
However, all too often people think of deprivation purely in urban terms. Over the past few years a sustained attack has been made under the Labour Government on the viability of our rural areas. Village schools have been closed, transport has been restricted, the rate support grant has been unfairly distributed—nobody can deny that because it is a statistical fact—and agriculture, which is still the mainstay of our villages, has been put at a serious disadvantage compared with our Continental neighbours. Under my right hon. Friend that has now been almost remedied.
National and local government, voluntary bodies and individuals who really care about the maintenance of the rural way of life must work closer together if that way of life is to survive as a coherent reality. The East Fellside project in Cumbria—which seeks to harness the experience and enthusiasm of all those who care about our rural areas—should make a valuable contribution, and act as a prototype for other areas.

Mr. Frank R. White: Mr. Frank R. White rose——

Mrs. Kellett-Bowman: I will not give way, for the simple reason that the hon. Member did not give way to me. Fan-is fair. One thing that is of enormous importance to country areas is their determination not to become dormitory areas for urban workers. In their battle to establish and preserve small industries in rural areas those areas have been greatly helped by COSIRA. We were delighted when COSIRA decided to build factories in the valliages of Halton and Glagate and we were flabbergasted when planning permission for those factories was refused by the Department of the Environment on the remarkable grounds that the workers in those villages could obtain work in Lancaster. Surely, that is exactly what COSIRA was set up to prevent. I would, therefore, be grateful if my hon. Friend would persuade his hon. Friend to reverse that most unfortunate decision.
All is not well in the North-West and I am the last person to pretend that it is. Neither is all ill in the region. We have some of the loveliest countryside, we have the most industrious and adaptable work force, we have the best communications and the sturdiest independence—particularly among Conservative-minded thinkers—of any region in the United Kingdom. We should be producing documents such as the spring edition of "North-West Success", which proclaims that the North-West is setting the pace in the chip revolution. That and another booklet "The success of overseas industry in the North-West" and yet another "North-West England—Centre for International Industry" are what we should be publicising. We should blow our own trumpet. If we capitalise on our undoubted advantages I believe that the North-West will once more be a pacesetter and will help to lead the country back to prosperity.

Mr. Kenneth Marks: I was interested in the comments of the hon. Member for Lancaster (Mrs. Kellett-Bowman). She must have missed our debates on rural post offices and school transport if she thinks that the Government will do any good for rural areas.
The hon. Lady's sole tribute to the Under-Secretary was that firms are filling in fewer forms since he was appointed, but some of those forms were applications for Government assistance which had been most valuable to many firms in the North-West, but which they have now lost.
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Bury and Radcliffe (Mr. White) on his opening speech. We were delighted that he combined a comprehensive speech with a brief one and gave more of us the opportunity to speak. My hon. Friend is not a newcomer to the Front Bench. He spent some time in government as a silent member of the Front Bench when he was Whip. It was a great loss to us that he was prevented from speaking during that period, but his success in the general election showed that he had done a tremendous amount of work for his constituency.
My hon. Friend mentioned industry, which is the main issue with which we are concerned, but he also referred to

health matters and the way in which the North-West is being neglected and will be neglected if the Government stay in office.
My hon. Friend also referred to young families and the difficulties that they face, not only in the North-West but in the rest of the country. On Thursday, the Prime Minister said that we had had an increase in our standard of living of 6 per cent. in the past 12 months. I am sure that the nation was delighted to hear that, but her claim does not apply to families with young children in the North-West or even in the prosperous South-East. They have had to bear more than their fair share of the sacrifices that the Government have demanded.
The hon. Member for North Fylde (Sir W. Clegg) talked about pouring in Government money. It is not simply a question of money, though some of the bodies that the hon. Member for Lancaster was talking about—for example, the development commission and CoSIRA—which have helped so much, involve Government money. The previous Labour Government increased the amount of money that was available and I am sure that the hon. Lady would like to see it increased further.
We also have to consider whether the Civil Service should be dispersed. Fylde and Blackpool have done well out of Civil Service dispersal, but the Government are stopping the process. It is not good enough to have administrative jobs and technical jobs and industry concentrated in the South-East.
The improvement of derelict land is in danger because of the loss of assisted area status. No decision has yet been made, but that danger is one of the problems facing the North-West.
My hon. Friend the Member for Bury and Radcliffe referred to textiles. The carpet industry is suffering particularly badly, not only because of the oil policies of the Canadian and American Governments, but partly because of an import quota on fibres, so that our industry cannot get fibres at a relatively low cost, and partly because there is no quota on the American fibres.
I hope that the Under-Secretary who is to reply will ensure, with the assistance of the Department of Trade, that when


firms such as Lancaster Carpets are suffering from American competition they should at least have the opportunity to get the fibres to enable them to compete.
I want to mention some educational matters, because education is the basis of many of our problems in the Northwest. The Government's policy of reducing grants to overseas students and making them pay the full rate will hit not only overseas students but British students at such institutions as the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology, which will have to cut the number of its courses, thereby reducing the number of British students.
In our debate on Greater Manchester on 18 January at which we suggested that an education Minister should have been present, we raised the question of the Centre for Educational Disadvantaged. I will not go into the tremendous work that the centre has done, but we were assured that the Secretary of State for Education and Science would be reviewing its future. The centre is due to close on 31 August and it is time that something was done about it.
The city authorities that have child populations that are rapidly reducing will be in the most difficulty because of the Government's education cuts. When there is a declining school population, it is not enough merely to maintain the teacher-pupil ratio, because that can lead to a loss of subjects taught and the loss of the complete timetable of some schools.
The conscientious councillors in some authorities have been put in a great dilemma. They are harassed by the Secretary of State for the Environment who has threatened that if they spend too much they will have their Government grant cut even further. The Secretary of State's attitude—a combination of bull at a gate and dog in the manger—makes the job of local authorities difficult, and I am not talking only about Labour authorities.
The future of education in Tameside was mentioned during the Greater Manchester debate. Two years ago, Tameside had a Conservative council. Since then, the electors of that borough have elected 30 Labour councillors and seven Conservative councillors, I make no forecasts

about what will happen on 1 May, but the result is likely to be along those lines. The new council has been extremely patient. It believed that it had the right to go ahead immediately with a comprehensive scheme, because such a scheme had been accepted by the DES on a previous occasion.
The Council has waited a long time for the decision of the Secretary of State to permit the scheme to go ahead in September. I will not argue the merits of a comprehensive system against a selective system, but it is in the interests of parents, children and the administrators who will have to organise any scheme that is operated this year that a decision should be made soon.

Mr. Tom Pendry: Does my hon. Friend agree that the attitude of the DES is bordering on the discourteous? On 17 March and 25 March the chairman of the Tameside education authority sent telegrams to the Secretary of State urging him to make a decision. The telegrams were not acknowledged, let alone answered. I sent a letter to the Secretary of State on 19 March and that has not been acknowledged or answered. Does my hon. Friend agree that that does not square with the Secretary of State's assurance to the deputation led by Councillor Roy Oldham in August that there would be a speedy settlement?

Mr. Marks: I wholeheartedly agree with my hon. Friend. We ought to have a decision. There has been too much delay already. Parents are asking what is to happen and the council cannot say either way what route Tameside education will take.
The Government's attacks on local government will stop the industrial reorganisation that is needed. Local government has a tremendous part to play. As the hon. Member for Lancaster said, what local government can do in getting industry into its areas can mean so much. The Government are stopping that.

Mr. Tom Arnold: In some ways, our debate is a re-run of that which we had in January on the motion of the right hon. Member for Manchester, Ardwick (Mr. Kaufman) on the problems of Greater Manchester. Of course,


many of the problems of Greater Manchester are reflected in the problems of the North-West as a whole.
I agree with what my hon. Friend the Member for Lancaster (Mrs. Kellett-Bowman) said about the paper that Conservative Members in the previous Parliament published about the role of small businesses in the North-West. Most people in the North-West are employed by small to medium sized businesses. When they do well, the economy of the region as a whole does well. The Government are trying to produce a situation in which we increase the profits of those businesses so that we can have fresh investment and new jobs. The North-West needs new jobs more than anything else.
That policy cannot be easily achieved. It is a question of trying to reverse many years of industrial decline. I recognise that the North-West has many great problems in terms of industrial dereliction and obsolescence.
It is a pleasure to have followed the hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton (Mr. Marks), who is a parliamentary neighbour of mine. Indeed, as I look round the Chamber I see that all my parliamentary neighbours who are here today are Labour Members. I hope that in the next general election we shall be more successful in Greater Manchester and that we shall return more Conservative Members. Nevertheless, it is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Gorton, and I should like to take up a point that he made about derelict land grants.
It is precisely because my local authority is very keen on pursuing a policy of economic enterprise areas that we need to maintain the 100 per cent. derelict land grants. I believe that hon. Members on both sides of the House are in agreement on this, and we urge the Government to look at it very carefully. I understand that the Department of Industry and the Department of the Environment are looking at the question. It is one that assumes great importance in terms of the decisions relating to regional policy as a whole.
I hope that the hon. Member for Stockport, South (Mr. McNally) will forgive me for trespassing on the affairs of the area of the old county borough, but Conservative councillors, and officers of the council, have approached me on this question, because we are anxious to develop areas

in the town centre for industrial enterprises, precisely because we want to create new jobs. Some of these areas are under multiple ownership at the moment and will require a compulsory purchase order to make them viable units. This is something to which we attach considerable importance.
Moving a little wider than an interest of immediate local concern, I should like to emphasise again what my hon. Friend the Member for Lancaster said about the importance and significance of future developments in regard to the European regional development fund. I would welcome an enlargement of the non-quota section beyond the present 5 per cent. limit referred to. I perfectly understand that such an enlargement would not of itself lead automatically to further benefits to the North-West because we would have to compete with many other areas of the United Kingdom as well as with the other members of the Western European Community. But it needs to be looked at, and I think that it would produce beneficial results, because the loss of the assisted area status in terms of most of Greater Manchester is leading to a situation in which we shall lose not only the derelict land grant—unless the Government have a change of mind on this—but also the benefits that we are entitled to expect at present from the ERDF.
I hope that the accession of other countries to the Community, and the review of the ERDF which the Government, the Commission and the European Council are committed to undertaking between now and 1 January next year, will produce a recognition in the Community that something needs to be done to improve the position of the United Kingdom in relation to the fund.
I should like, as I have indicated already, to see the non-quota section enlarged so that we can try to compete for a greater level of funds than is available to us at present.
In trying to establish the framework necessary for the expansion of private enterprise, there are a number of areas in which the Government can be of assistance. In this connection, I should like for a moment to return to a concern that is purely local to those hon. Members who sit for north-east Cheshire but which has a bearing on Greater Manchester as a whole. It would be very helpful if the


Government could now confirm that in 1982–83 a start will be made on the improved roadwork system in my constituency and in that of the hon. Member for Stockport, South. We urgently need a clear signal from the Government that they understand the problems that we face with regard to communications and transport in the area if we are to attract new industry on to the premises which the local Conservative council is seeking to make available.
If a start can be made on the A6 redevelopment and bypass in the time scale that has been suggested, that will be extremely helpful. It will be helpful because the local authority and the local Members of Parliament are at one in trying to do everything we can to ensure that we have the proper climate for industrial expansion so that enterprise can fully have its head.
What we need more than anything else, as I said earlier, is the creation of opportunities for new employment. This will come about only if local firms can see the day when they have not only immediate profits but the possibility of investing later large sums of money for the future.

Mr. Stan Thorne: I do not want to get involved in a parochial type of political argument, which is always the danger when we are speaking about particular regions of the country, but Preston happens to have had a particularly difficult time over recent months, with closures at Courtaulds, Orr's Mill and Bright's, the contraction of small engineering firms, and various other indicators of a worsening economic/industrial position.
Discrimination in the allocation of resources must be opposed by those in the regions. The question I would pose—no doubt it has been referred to already by other speakers, and will be referred to later—is whether there is any evidence to support the "two nations" view of our society.
Many people, when referring to the two nations, have an imaginary line in mind, running from the Wash, through the Midlands, and ending in the South-West. It can be argued that below that line certain things apply, and that above it

certain other things apply—and they worsen as we get further north. Northern Ireland must be included in that consideration.
But my concern—and that of all those who are in the Chamber at present—is with the North-West. It is interesting to note that the three to one representation that roughly exists as between Labour and Tory Members in the area is reflected in the present attendance in the Chamber.
What aspects do we need to examine in order either to reinforce the notion of a two nations economy or to destroy it? What research do we have to engage in? The figures are available. What percentages of children reach university in each area? What percentage of active patients are there on general practitioners" lists in each area? We are already familiar with the percentages of unemployed. What are the percentages of families in receipt of social security benefits, particularly those in receipt of invalidity benefit? The figures show a marked contrast between the two areas.
There is an indication that crime and violence are growing among young people in certain parts of the North-West. That is not, in my view, unconnected with the low level of expectation that they have when they leave school.
The transport system was mentioned by the hon. Member for Hazel Grove (Mr. Arnold). There again, we can contrast the provisions made for transport in the South-East with those made in certain parts of the North-West. I represent Preston, but I live in Liverpool. Therefore, I have reasonable knowledge of the area from Merseyside up to the North Fylde coast. When we consider communities such as Kirkby, Skelmersdale and Netherley, and ask where their equivalents exist in the South-East, we are forced to ask why the same characteristics are not present.
I recall that Netherley, in the North-West, was planned as a housing estate. Clearly, the criterion was to assemble as many units of accommodation as possible on the smallest possible piece of land, for immediate occupation, in order to reduce the housing list. Any attempt to build outside was resisted by central Government.
Has our membership of the EEC—the hon. Member for Lancaster (Mrs. Kellett-Bowman) should be familiar with this, if


with nothing else—further exacerbated the differences in terms of expectations for the future? Many people in the North-West already see that certain planning activities are related to the fact that the South-East of England is far nearer to France, to Germany, and to other parts of Europe, than is the North-West. That may be not unconnected with the fate of the ports of Liverpool and Preston. Are they to grow or to pass away? We have evidence that Preston will close. In the meantime, the port of Liverpool faces urgent problems.
As regards industry, in the Preston and Lancashire area—hon. Members on both sides of the House are conscious of this problem—the textile industry is virtually dead. With what have we replaced it? In Preston and its surrounds we have British Aerospace and British Leyland. Without them, we would certainly be in considerable difficulties in terms of the economic structure of that area. What are the consequences for the future of relying upon those two enterprises for the well-being of that area?
Here one necessarily turns to the question of planning for development in the North-West. Obviously any planning exercise is useless without the appropriate provision of resources. Private investment has been the accepted way of improving the economic situation in the regions. The previous Labour Government and the present Conservative Government refer to private investors. Clearly there is little incentive for private investors to move to the North-West. But I am far more concerned with public investment. For example, are we prepared to extend, with the help of public money, the role of the Central Lancashire Development Corporation? Clearly the Government consider public investment of that kind anathema. Yet, without it, the prospects for the North-West are grim indeed. Why cannot the Central Lancashire Development Corporation get involved in building for public enterprise—public enterprise of new types, public enterprise in which local authorities can get involved and in which local community co-operatives can be established so that, within the community, they have a vested interest in making a particular enterprise a viable, economic unit?
Of course, that smacks of Socialism, and that is the last thing that we can expect from the Government. In my

view, we did not get a great deal of incentive or initiative in that direction from the previous Labour Government, but I am optimistic about the changes that we shall be able to impose when, as undoubtedly we shall, we elect a Labour Government in, say, October 1983.
In the North-West, housing still remains an important issue at a time when local authority cuts are being made at the behest of the Government. Because of time constraints, I cannot go in great detail into the effects of cuts in housing in my area. There are 25,000 urgent priority cases on the housing list—some of them living in multi-storey blocks of flats—and their expectancy of early rehousing while their children are young is now even worse under this Government—and it was not particularly good under the previous Labour Government—following the decision of the Secretary of State for the Environment backed by his bosses in the Cabinet.
The Lancashire county council has announced and gone into some detail regarding its £10 million cuts in education. It is difficult in a short space of time to spell out what that means. Undoubtedly it will have a severe effect on any unemployed person seeking retraining or possibly seeking to go into an entirely different employment and needing to start with an OND or something of that description because grants are not available following the Government's cuts.
My hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Gorton (Mr. Marks) said that the May elections will have a relevant part to play because some interesting politics emerge in regard to the rates in some of our major towns. I live in an area represented by three Conservative members of the Liverpool city council. In consequence, I had a leaflet from the council delivered to me. It contains probably the most blatant lie that I have seen in a piece of political propaganda for some time. It reads:
In November, Conservatives resolved that the Council Housing deficit of £3·6 million be paid by tenants. Labour and Liberal voted that it be paid by the Ratepayer. So you pay!
The implication is clear: that tenants do not pay rates. That is a major lie. If the Conservatives were honest, they would have to admit that people who get


tax relief on mortgages are better off under our system than the rentpayer who pays rates.
Certain other leaflets have also been issued. One has been issued by the Liberal Party with its particular sort of mischief. It talks of rates being held constant in 1975–76 without mentioning that the Labour Government increased the rate support grant to make possible the holding down of those rates.
One can say that the Tories nationally and locally are consistent and radical. Their aim is clear. It is to destroy the Welfare State both nationally and locally.
The Liberals are inconsistent, gimmicky, immoral and, in certain circumstances, downright dishonest. [HON. MEMBERS: "Where are the Liberals?"] The fact that they are not here merely illustrates their irrelevance in this type of debate.
There can be little question but that the Labour Party will take control in many towns and cities following the May elections. It does not mean that we can be complacent. It means that the Labour Party at local level will face tremendous problems. How are Labour-controlled councils to provide services that the people in their localities are entitled to expect in view of the cuts that have been imposed by the Government? In the seventeenth century John Locke gave the British people the right to eject, to throw out, a bad Government pursuing bad policies. The sooner the British people do that, the better.

Mr. John Lee: I think that all North-West Members in the House will agree on the problems facing the traditional industries in that region. We have had a series of unhappy closures in the textile and footwear industries on an almost weekly, if not daily, basis through a combination of high interest rates, imports and the recession generally. I believe that there is a strong case for more effective action to be taken against the dumping of foreign textiles. I suggest that our Department of Trade Ministers should be prepared to consider allowing the private textile sector to second one, two or three of its employees, paid for by private

enterprise, to the Department's antidumping unit with a view to beefing it up.
I also believe that we should take advantage of our present massive public sector purchasing power and use that power much more positively to buy British, certainly in so far as textiles are concerned.
But, above all—and I think that this applies to industry in the North-West and in the country generally—what we need more than anything else is a lowering of interest rates.
However, I believe that Opposition Members are doing a disservice to the North-West by exaggerating the region's problems. The hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr. Straw), when speaking in my constituency some weeks ago, talked about an industrial holocaust coming in the not-too-distant future. Such emotive words and exaggerated phrases are total nonsenses. They bear no relation to north-east Lancashire, and particularly to the constituency that I know and represent.
In my seat of Nelson and Colne, we have very well diversified industry. Apart from the traditional areas of textiles, we have a thriving furniture industry. It is the second or third largest funiture manufacturing area in Britain. We have substantial aerospace, engineering and packaging interests, and we have medical products and wall coverings industries. They are very successful companies.
I was very proud last Friday to be able to take my hon. Friend the Financial Secretary to the Treasury around one of our newer engineering companies in Pendle. It was started in 1967. Today it has a turnover of £2· million. It exports 60 per cent. of its production. It uses the most modern machinery, including some from Japan, and it has recently won a major export order to Japan of nearly £500,000. There are many more firms such as that in northeast Lancashire.
Today I was pleased to read that a firm in Clitheroe has just been awarded the Queen's Award for Export. That is another example of the first-class firms and first-class management that exist in north-east Lancashire.
By continuing to look at only one group of companies and one group of industries, Opposition Members do the disservice


that I have mentioned. They create a totally false impression. My hon. Friend the Member for North Fylde (Sir W. Clegg) drew attention to the fact that these persistent exaggerated comments lower the morale of the people in north-western England. They are potentially damaging to potential investors and to the attraction of institutions which we want very much to come and develop new industrial estates in northern England.
What we need in north-east Lancashire particularly is a much better infrastructure—particularly the M65. I know that a number of Opposition Members, including the hon. and learned Member for Accrington (Mr. Davidson), have been pushing for this, as has my hon. Friend the Member for Rossendale (Mr. Trippier). We need the M65 to link us with the national motorway network as soon as possible. But, more particularly, we need new small factory units. The newer industries that have developed in north-east Lancashire have taken advantage of the old mill premises. These are now almost totally occupied and taken. I was delighted to see in the recent Budget the new measures to encourage new small factory development—the 100 per cent. allowances and the £5 million, to be supported by private capital, to build new workshops.
I should like to make a final point on something that does not affect north-east Lancashire particularly but affects the North-West generally. It seems as though we in the North-West shall have two or possibly three of the new enterprise zones announced in the Budget speech. This is a very bold initiative. I believe that it will do much to improve, to build up and to rejuvenate the inner city areas.

Mr. Eric S. Heffer: Rubbish.

Mr. Lee: The hon. Gentleman says "Rubbish." A number of Socialist local authority leaders who will be benefiting from these enterprise zones have ex-pressed similar comments. We accept that enterprise zones are anathema to many Labour politicians.
My plea today, however, is to the joint stock banks. They have had a very good run during the last two years, and they will probably have another very prosperous year ahead. I hope that they back up the boldness and initiative that

the Government have shown and put together for these enterprise zones financial packages that are equally as bold as the measures themselves—financial packages in the terms of low interest rates, longer repayment periods and possibly the use of their mobile information centres in these potential enterprise zones to back up and to demonstrate the services which they provide. I believe that the joint stock banks have a lot to offer. They have the money and resources. Let them back up the boldness of the Chancellor's initiative.

Mr. Arthur Davidson: Life has never been particularly easy for large sections of the people in the North-West over many periods of time. However, I think that it is true to say that the North-West has been particularly hard hit in the last few months. I am not for a moment suggesting that that is all the fault of the Conservative Government. But equally, it would be erroneous to say that the Conservative Government's policy has had nothing to do with the bad times that many people in north-east Lancashire and other areas of the North-West are going through.
I agree with a great deal of what has been said by the hon. Member for Nelson and Colne (Mr. Lee). In north-east Lancashire in particular, small industries have played and are playing a very important part in our economic life. We need to encourage small industries to come and open up in north-east Lancashire. But the reality is that the thing about which most employers complain is high interest rates. It is very difficult for them to invest. Again and again, they ask me, as I am sure they have asked the hon. Gentleman, "When will interest rates come down?" The Government cannot pretend that they are not responsible for high interest rates.
The textile industry—and again, the hon. Gentleman is quite right—has been particularly badly savaged in recent months. The irony is that Conservative Members repeatedly say "The reason for unemployment is the high and excessive wage claims put in by the trade unions. The workers have refused to adapt to new conditions, to new manning levels and to new technology." Nothing of that can be said about the textile industry. The workers in that industry have done


everything that has been asked of them. On balance, they are poorly paid—or not well paid. They do not make excessive wage demands. They are anything but militant. They have adapted to all manning levels that have been asked of them. Yet thousands and thousands of them, in constituency after constituency, are being put out of work.

Something is wrong somewhere.

Mr. D. A. Trippier: Exercising his customary fairness, will not the hon. and learned Gentleman concede that the greatest problem that the textile industry faces is the high level of imports? Will he also concede that the multi-fibre arrangement, with which I know he is very familiar, was negotiated by the previous Government and not by the present Government, and that that will not come up for renewal until 1981?

Mr. Davidson: Even without being my usual agreeable and reasonable self, I could not fail to agree with that. Clearly, the MFA was negotiated by the previous Government, and it was very effective. That does not mean that it will be effective for all time. It clearly needs renegotiating.

Mr. Straw: On exactly that point, does my hon. and learned Friend agree that the problem of imports facing the textile industry today is not so much a problem of imports from low-cost countries, which are covered by the MFA, but of imports from the United States and Canada, in respect of which the Conservative Government have lamentably failed to introduce controls?

Mr. Davidson: Once again, being my usual agreeable and reasonable self, I cannot fail to do anything but agree with my hon. Friend.
I promised you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, that I would be brief—and I shall be my usual agreeable self. I do not wish to indulge in a chorus running down northeast Lancashire. There is a danger that one can do so. Nevertheless, we cannot escape certain facts. In addition to the other things that I have mentioned, the quality of life is being eroded. Here and there a library, a sports centre's facilities and a few home helps are cut. Those who are, on balance, low-paid need and

value such facilities. They enrich the life of the area.
Although private industry has done a great deal to help the economic vitality of the region, public investment has also played an important part. Harm has been done as a result of taking away intermediate area status and as a result of the loss of what little EEC aid there had been. I appeal to the Minister seriously to consider the points raised by the hon. Member for Nelson and Colne, even if he does not wish to consider mine.

Mr. Robert Atkins: The attitude of the North-West, as evinced by the area that I represent and in which I live, is one that should be cultivated and presented more widely to the country. People are not prepared to spend what they do not have. That is something that dictated the course of the election campaign, in which I and many of my colleagues were involved. I make no apology for using Preston as an example. It is the administrative centre of Lancashire and has a reputation that stretches back for hundreds of years.
Hon. Members will not be surprised to learn that I do not share in their gloom and doom about the North-West, particularly when I consider Preston borough council. Four years ago Preston borough council was controlled by the Labour Party. It managed to achieve an all-time record rate increase of 31·2p in the pound, which put it at the top of the rate table in Lancashire. As a result, industry and those ratepayers who had enough money left to pay for their train fares fled the town. When the council was taken over by the Tory Party, it had to do something about that. To cut a long and difficult story short, the rates are now 8p in the pound. Consequently, there has been an increased demand from industry and local businesses to participate in the good sense, good fortune and good management of the Preston area.
That has not been achieved by throwing people out of work or by cutting back services. The record of Preston shows an extension of services, not a reduction. It has been done by simple good management and by the natural attrition of staff, who were not replaced when replacements were not required. They have capitalised on the good sense


and mangement of the controlling Conservative Party. That makes Preston the lowest rated borough in Lancashire and, indeed, in the whole of the United Kingdom. That is an achievement for the North-West, and should be shouted from the roof tops.
As housing has been mentioned, I shall refer to an imaginative scheme being used in Preston. Houses have been built in conjunction with a building contractor, and those houses will be offered for sale. Depending on one's political beliefs, it might prove extraordinary to learn—it surprised even me—that two Labour councillors were at the front of that queue to buy houses. One must draw one's own conclusions.
Alongside the achievements of Preston borough council are those of the county of Lancashire. It is the second lowest rated county in the country as a result of good management, prudence and good sense. That realism has begun to pay off and local businesses have begun to return.
I wish that I could speak in the same glowing terms about the North-West water authority. Many hon. Members have doubtless received complaints about the activities of that authority over the years. However, one particular cause of concern is the charge for sprinklers and fire-fighting mains. That concern can best be summed up if I quote from a local company, Cartmell & Barlow Limited, which manufactures coffins. With some common sense, it wrote:
Water is an essential commodity, but so too are coffins; and according to this hair-brained thinking, we should be justified in charging a quarterly levy to Funeral Directors to cover them for availability of supply during an emergency, e.g. a ' flu epidemic'.
There is some sense in that slightly facetious remark.
As the hon. Member for Preston, South (Mr. Thorne) said, problems have arisen as a result of the closure of the Courtaulds mill, which threw 2,600 people out of work. It is also proposed to close Preston docks. However, we are using those examples to provoke more development, industry and housing. I know that the Central Lancashire Development Corporation is keeping a close watch on Courtaulds and on that site. I also know that the board reviewed the matter last Friday. It is anxious to see proposals

for comprehensive redevelopment implemented quickly. It is conscious of the need to ensure maximum involvement of the private sector.
The Central Lancashire Development Corporation believes that the problem of demolishing the existing large structure of the Courtaulds mill is enormous and that it will be expensive. It is determined—it is hoped in co-operation with Courtaulds—to prevent the development of virgin land in the area of the site, while existing structures are left to rot. In the view of the CLDC, the agency controlling redevelopment—which will of course benefit from the development of a green field site—should bear a proper share of the cost of clearing up potential dereliction. The CLDC has told Courtaulds that it will consider sympathetically the possibility of being involved in such a role. At the time that was a savage blow, and I raised the matter on the Floor of the House. It is gradually being lessened through the intelligence and foresight of Preston borough council, in co-ordination with the Central Lancashire New Town.
The Central Lancashire New Town is sometimes the subject of criticism. I am sure that similar authorities may be open to criticism. It was set up to counteract the money devoted to Merseyside and Greater Manchester. For too long those areas have received a lot of money from the Government, but have not utilised it to any great benefit. The Central Lancashire New Town has been able to act as a catalyst and has directed money to needy areas, such as Courtaulds.
Preston docks may close, and the potential of that site is enormous. One does not have to be a dreamer or fantasist to imagine the potential of that site and how it might be developed. A marina, private housing and advance factories could be developed. An enormous development would provide more jobs than are presently available in the docks. Leisure, business, industrial and housing amenities could be added to the ancient town of Preston. Central Lancashire New Town has put in a lot of work in terms of the redevelopment of the older parts of Preston.
It is instructive to use Preston as an example. Hon. Members have expressed rightful concern about declining industries, such as the textile industry. There is great


potential in new industries, and Preston's intelligent foresight of years ago—of moving into industries such as aerospace-has proved a boon. The Central Lancashire New Town has been able to help in a variety of ways, and continues to do so.
One aspect of great concern—I regret to say in so august an assembly—is the problem of sewerage. Many hon. Members, particularly those who represent Manchester constituencies, will know that sewers have collapsed in parts of Manchester. The situation in the North-West, including Preston, is worrying. The sewers are old and, by the very nature of things, require an enormous amount of capital investment. There should be a considerable effort to find the money needed. I expect that those Labour Members who oppose the Common Market will be the last to cry when the EEC provides the money for some of this restoration.

Mr. James A. Dunn: Does the hon. Member expect that private industry will also make its contribution, following what he said about the North-West water authority?

Mr. Atkins: I am sure that private industry will, through the high rates that it pays, contribute a great deal of money to the sewers.
I turn now to some of the industries that are achieving success in and around Preston and central Lancashire. I was delighted to see in the papers this morning that a Preston company, Gemmill and Dunsmore, has just received the Queen's award for export achievement—and its industry is textile machinery. Even in textiles, all is not lost.
The two biggest companies in the area are British Aerospace and British Leyland. British Aerospace has just announced its results for a period of years, and for the first time reports sales of over £1,000 million. That is a tremendous achievement. In case any Labour Member should say that that is a result of nationalisation, I would say that such a claim is tommy rot. These developments have been built up over many years and relate to projects that were funded and organised when the company was private.
The company has also announced a planned campaign of expansion. Whether in building more and faster ADV versions

of the Tornado—the F2, as it is known in the RAF—more 125s in Chester or more Airbus wings, British Aerospace is a success story, and I am convinced that British Aerospace Limited will be an even greater success story.
There is a lot of knocking of British Leyland, but I am proud that the area of the company that is most successful is adjacent to my constituency, in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Chorley (Mr. Dover). The new vehicle that the company has announced, the T45, is already successful and I hope that there is more success to come. Perhaps the Minister will give more consideration to the problems of type approval regulations, which exist for private vehicles, but not for commercial vehicles.
There are problems in the North-West and no one would seek to deny them, but there are great success stories as well and the potential exists for more. The attitude in the area, that we cannot afford to spend what we do not have, shows how this area will develop. The potential, the infrastructure and the hard work are there; above all, the people are there to do the work. All that we need is that extra spark of encouragement, and then the problems of the North-West will diminish.

Mr. Tom McNally: The hon. Member for Hazel Grove (Mr. Arnold), who, unfortunately, is not present now, apologised to me earlier for interfering in the internal affairs of the old metropolitan borough of Stockport. I do not mind his support for new jobs for the town or his call for the completion of the M63. In that respect we welcome the interest of Hazel Grove. Unfortunately, the Tory councillors that Hazel Grove and Cheadle send to rule Stockport also give us the cuts in money for bus passes for the disabled, the axing of nursery schools and the cutting of property repairs, which will give future generations council slums. That is the other aspect of Hazel Grove's interest in Stockport.
As several hon. Members have said, the North-West is the heart of industrial England. I cannot agree with the hon. Member for North Fylde (Sir W. Clegg) in saying that we are exaggerating the problems and thus causing damage. This is always a problem, but, as someone who was born in North Fylde and whose


family still lives there, I do not think that its people believe that their economic problems are exaggerated.
The Government cannot be absolved of responsibility. Less than a year ago I saw in Stockport expensive Saatchi and Saatchi advertisements saying "the Conservatives are coming". They came; but many small business men who voted for them did not imagine that with them would come more than a doubling of the inflation rate, a record level of MLR for a uniquely long period or the doubling of VAT. Those are the realities facing small and medium firms in the North-West.
Rarely can a Government have so effectively destroyed business confidence, as many reviews by business itself in the North-West have revealed. Therefore, we cannot allow the Tories to say "Do not mention this. Do not disturb confidence. People will think it is too terrible."The skills and the capability of the working people of the North-West have never been in doubt. What is now in doubt is how those disastrous policies will hit the economy of the region.
I was interested to hear the hon. Member for Preston, North (Mr. Atkins) praise British Aerospace. How a little constituency interest overrides prejudice! The workers of British Aerospace rightly resent the meddling of the Secretary of State for Industry in their firm. As the hon. Member said, it is a success story. There is no justification for the sheer ideological prejudice, interference and casting of doubt on the future of that firm by the Secretary of State.

Mr. Robert Atkins: Mr. Robert Atkins rose——

Mr. McNally: No, I will not give way. Many hon. Members still wish to speak.
Nor can people in my constituency understand the Secretary of State's ideological interference in the future of Fairey Engineering. Two years ago, the workers had a bankrupt firm on their hands. I am pleased to see my right hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Ardwick (Mr. Kaufman) in his place. He is known and respected in Stockport for the great work he did with the NEB in the rescue of Fairey. Now—again, not because it has failed but because it is successful—the future of that company is put in doubt by the meddling of the Secretary of State.
These successful companies have offended on one count only in the Secretary of State's eyes: they are examples of public enterprise that has worked. When it comes to the real problems facing industry, the right hon. Gentleman says that he will not interfere, that his ideological purity makes him leave these things to the market place.
A North-West industrialist recently told me that since 1978–79 the competitiveness of his goods had been eroded, compared with those of his main competitors, by 35 per cent. in West Germany, 24 per cent. in France and 21 per cent. in Sweden. That was due to two factors—the strength of the pound and the rate of United Kingdom inflation, both directly caused by present Government policy.
My hon. Friend the Member for Blackburn (Mr. Straw) warned of a disaster facing industry. He was right to do so, because of these factors which are presently at work. Talking privately to industrialists one finds a deep gloom about the future under this Government's economic strategy. An example is the hasty and ill-considered withdrawal of assisted area status for the North-West. The North-West Industrial Development Association has said:
The withdrawal of assisted area status from large areas of North-West England will seriously inhibit the future economic development of the region
That again is Government policy at work.
The neglect of regional policy goes hand in hand with another piece of "noninterference "—namely, the refusal to guide Inmos into a development area. We are told that the Government cannot interfere in these matters of the market place, yet they have willingly interfered in success stories such as Fairey and British Aerospace. We have double standards from the Secretary of State for Industry. When we scratch away the ideological pretensions, we find a lamentable lack of industrial strategy.
One further industrial fact must be laced and added to any assessment of industry in the North-West—namely, that many informed and reasonable men on both sides of industry, and on both sides of this House, fear for the future of the textile industry. The Secretary of State for Trade has continually taken a "too-little, too-late" approach which has


already cost thousands of jobs. In the Secretary of State for Trade and his Department we have a dangerous combination for free trade. The hon. Member for Nelson and Colne (Mr. Lee) may put forward ideas about a procurement policy and faster action on antidumping. But let me tell him that he will find in the Department of Trade and in the person of the Secretary of State, people who do not want to listen to that kind of argument. Because of that, the textile industry is in real danger. It is time that the Secretary of State stopped pussyfooting about over the future of the multi-fibre arrangement and gave the industry some long-term hope for the future.
A number of hon. Members have said that we should not paint too gloomy a picture of the region. I have sketched some of the positive harmful actions that the Government have done to the region. However, they cannot take away from the region its multifarious skills, its advanced industry and its good communications. These should be emphasised. A Government with some concept of regional policy and a commitment to making industry work could make a success story of the North-West. Perhaps the North-West voters knew in their hearts that the Conservative manifesto was not to be believed. Perhaps that is why they returned so many Labour Members at the last election. Perhaps they did not trust the aspirations of the Secretary of State for Industry, or think that the Conservatives really gave hope and opportunity to a region of high skills, high technology and industry.
I do not know how long the present Government will survive or how long the present economic and industrial strategy will last. As long as it lasts, it will harm the North-West and its industry. Perhaps I should remind the Minister of something that was said more than 50 years ago by a then Member of Parliament who sat for a constituency in the North-West. Perhaps the Minister will listen to him rather than me. Sir Winston Churchill once said:
I would rather see finance less proud and industry more content.
As industry in the North-West sees the windfall profits of the private banks untouched by this Government, at the

same time as industrial and regional aid is withdrawn, it will become more and more discontented, and it is right that it should be so.

Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Bernard Weatherill): This is a very important debate and I am anxious that everyone who wishes to take part should be called. If every hon. Member speaks for an average of six minutes, I shall be able to call everyone who wishes to speak.

Mr. D. A. Trippier: I am grateful to you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, for indicating that we have about six minutes each. I shall try to confine myself to that limit.
Anyone listening to the speeches from the Opposition Benches today could not fail to be amazed at the hypocrisy of a party which has failed abysmally in governing this country for two-thirds of the past 20 years. Perhaps the saddest aspect of this debate is that the vast majority of Labour Members have been so destructive. Not one has put forward any new constructive proposal. Opposition Members have trotted out precisely the same proposals which led to the region's decline and resulted in the legacy that they left us last May. For that reason, if for no other, at a time when the full consequences of Labour's mishandling of the economy are taking full effect, the debate this afternoon should be turned round and we should be censuring the Opposition.
After only 11 months in office the Conservative Government have dramatically changed the course of this country's economic policy and are determined to reverse the decline.

Mrs. Gwyneth Dunwoody: At a cost of 1·4 million unemployed.

Mr. Trippier: I do not know why the hon. Lady should make such a remark when her Government doubled unemployment in the North-West.

Mrs. Dunwoody: Wait until we see what happens under the Conservatives.

Mr. Trippier: After such a short period it would be impossible to expect the effects of the changes we are making in policy to have worked their way through the system but major steps have been


taken, all of which have a direct effect on the North-West. We have increased incentives by cutting taxes. We have increased incentives for small businesses in the recent Budget. We have removed constraints and distortions and we have reduced bureaucracy by abolishing controls on prices, dividends, pay and foreign exchange. We have also eliminated a lot of waste and that has represented a £90 million saving. Increased exploration in the North Sea will benefit the Northwest, as any other region. We have secured a better use of energy resources by realistic pricing policies. We have restored realism to the nationalised industries' finances and pay bargaining. We accept entirely that success will take some time to materialise. No one could accuse us of not warning the electorate on this score. The Prime Minister and the Chancellor of the Exchequer have made that abundantly clear before, during and since the last election.
There are encouraging signs. North Sea oil outputs are booming. We shall be self-sufficient in oil this year. The balance of payments is in deficit because imports are too high but the fact remains that exports are at record levels and invisible trade is doing well. Last year the United Kingdom overtook West Germany to become second only to the United States in gross as well as net invisible earnings.
In the textile and footwear industries, which are predominant in my constituency, the Opposition cannot shake off their responsibility. This is manifestly the case with textiles where, in the North-West region, and particularly in Greater Manchester and Lancashire, we have had mills closing at the rate of one a week since 1 January this year. The Opposition should not be so smug about the fact that that has happened during our tenure of office. The negotiation for the MFA took place under the last Administration, and everyone knows that it cannot be renegotiated until 1981. Because we have to wait until then—and the Opposition negotiated the length of the agreement, as well as the terms of the quota levels—there may well be no spinning or weaving mills left to renegotiate for.

Mr. Straw: Of course the multi-fibre arrangement was not perfect but it was negotiated with all-party support. Will not

the hon. Member accept that the major problems of the textile industry at present are very high interest and exchange rates and imports of dumped goods from the United States and Canada?

Mr. Trippier: The hon. Member has raised two points. First, he says that the MFA had all-party support, but he must realise that the people who negotiated it through the EEC were not shadow spokesmen on our side, but Ministers in the then Government. They actually sat around the table and negotiated it and then brought it back to the House of Commons for ratfication or otherwise.
Secondly, the hon. Member should listen more carefully to the textile trade unions, as well as the employers, who would tell him that the major reason why the textile industry is under such pressure at present is largely because of imports. The closures in east Lancashire, certainly by Tootal, were largely because of increased import penetration. Let there be no mistake that this Government inherited the agreement from the previous Administration and there is still too high a level of imports. I have attempted to put the record straight. I am grateful to the hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr. Straw) for his intervention. Many Conservative Members will continue to fight for a strengthened multi-fibre arrangement to be renegotiated next year and for the bilateral arrangement to be renegotiated the year after.
It is essential that the Secretary of State for Trade makes his position crystal clear, as a Community view will be sought before the GATT textile committee meetings in August. As Britain is under the most pressure, we should take the initiative and lead the Community. Only in that way can we avoid a recurrence of the disaster that has hit east Lancashire. Tootal has closed many mills in the area, culminating in a closure in my constituency last week.
Footwear has also faced increased competition from imports, which has already led to many closures and which will lead to more. The Government must take action—in the form of an increase in selective import controls, and more effective anti-dumping procedures of the sort that were referred to by my hon. Friend the Member for Nelson and Colne (Mr. Lee). The footwear industry also faces a problem from within, which the Government


must examine carefully. A retail commitment was introduced to ensure that the footwear retailers supported the footwear manufacturers by buying British where-ever possible. To say that the retail commitment has not worked is a gross understatement. To say that it has been effectively monitored by the footwear EDC is a sham. I hope that the Minister will deal with that point in detail in his reply.
The Government are determined to create a climate of enterprise in which entrepreneurship, innovation and success are rewarded in industry, in the North-West. Nothing should deviate them from that course. The public have already experienced the alternative strategy which manifested itself between 1974 and 1979. That strategy, under the previous Labour Government, did nothing to arrest the decline in the North-West. It compounded it. That is why the vast majority of British industrialists in the North-West are solidly behind the Government's policies. If they have any fear, it is not that the policies will not work, but that the Government will deviate from their original course. The first objective for the Government is to reduce inflation. Only when that has been achieved can a sustained improvement in the economy begin—with the promotion of initiative and enterprise and the provision of new jobs, especially in small firms in the North-West. The Government's policies must succeed if we are to lift ourselves out of the malaise which results from being a second-rate nation.

Mr. Michael Meacher: It would have been one thing if the Government had withdrawn intermediate status from the North-West if the last decade and forecasts had shown that its condition was improving, but they show that the situation in the North-West has become steadily worse over the last 10 years. The reason is not, as the hon. Member for Rossendale (Mr. Trippier) said, the previous Government's considerable level of aid, but, in spite of that, in relative as well as absolute terms. That applies whatever yardstick one takes. If the unemployment vacancy ratio is taken as a better yardstick of the firmness of the labour market than unemployment levels per se, the position of the North-

West is vastly worse than the national average. Without exception, in recent months the North-West has had the highest unemployment vacancy ratio. How can the Government justify removing intermediate area status from the North-West when it contains no less than 18 travel-to-work areas where the unemployment vacancy ratio is greater than the national average?
The North-West has been losing not only its share of employment but its share of capital investment. In seeking to justify his policy, the Secretary of State said in a debate on regional policy last year:
To a limited extent there has been some apparent success in regional policy, judging by the disproportionate amount of the total investment—disproportionate in terms of the population concerned—that has taken place over recent years in the regions."—[Official Report, 24 July 1979; Vol. 971, col. 365.]
The North-West has been considerably more disadvantaged than other regions in general. While fixed capital formation by industry and Government has been about 9 per cent. of the national total, the population of the North-West accounts for about 12 per cent. of the national total. Again, I ask how can the Government justify cutting regional development grant aid when investment levels are already so far behind the rest of the country?
The North-West also has particular environmental difficulties—many in my constituency—in terms of large areas of undeveloped and derelict land, the derelict and potentially dangerous state of the underground water supply and sewerage installations, and an excessive amount of obsolete industrial property—perhaps no less than a third predating the First World War. Much such land is in my constituency. On what grounds can the Government justify de-designating the North-West outside Merseyside, when these problems are virtually as severe now as when the area was originally designated as an assisted area? The Government's wish is to achieve a large public expenditure cutback, rather than to pursue a rational policy that is designed to assist the regions. Because of that, they are unlikely to backtrack wholly, however damaging their proposals. But will they not demonstrate at least a measure of flexibility in order to minimise the damage?
Because assisted area status is at present combined with other specific aids, the North-West stands to lose those also when it is deprived of its intermediate area status. Therefore will not the Government think again about the specific aids, and ensure that they remain available where the conditions of eligibility are met? That would at least avoid the aggravating, cumulative effect of de-designation, and it would ensure that abrupt deprivation is not compounded by loss of such valuable aids, in their own rights, as tourism grants, 100 per cent. land dereliction grants, and rent-free periods for small firms.
Under the present rules withdrawal of assisted area status will deprive the North-West of future grants from the European regional development fund. Yet the whole of the North-West—not simply Merseyside—as well as Scotland, Wales and the Northern region falls within a band of regional unemployment greater than 100 per cent. of the EEC average. Surely, on those grounds it is a justified candidate for ERDF aid. The Government prefer to reserve a more selective and discriminatory approach, but will they consider pressing for an industry-based, rather than a purely area-based, criterion for assistance, since that would have the considerable merit of concentrating aid on the textile industry, thus giving aid to the North-West?
Regional aid has been axed purely because of the dogmatic economics of the money supply. The Minister should recognise that the North-West, outside, Merseyside, should not be made the pawn of a dogmatic and increasingly discredited economic policy. Since the cutbacks are being imposed on an area where the position is already deteriorating, a major U-turn by the Government is the only way of avoiding a serious, dangerous and prolonged slump for the North-West.

Mr. Anthony Steen: I shall concentrate on one aspect of the North-West. The region will not change much, and we must have a clearer statement about the part that central Government will play in the local situation. How far will central Government dis-

criminate in favour of one area against another? The uncertainty of whether the Government intend to intervene makes it more difficult for small firms to make informed decisions. The absence of dependable information about how local government and central Government will move prevents small firms from investing and the major financial institutions from finding customers prepared to take risk capital. The uncertainty is aggravating an already unstable situation.
The previous Government did not help. They talked about inner city rejuvenation, but they did nothing about it. They produced a White Paper and called together partnership committees. They believed that by bringing together central Government, local government and the health authorities they would arrest the downward spiral in inner cities. They left out private enterprise representation, the CBI, the trade unions and the community. It was crazy for the last Government to talk about partnership, when they ignored half the community that creates the wealth.
The Conservative Government had a clear mandate to reduce bureaucracy and reduce public intervention. Their mandate was to allow market forces to operate without constraint or distortion. That is the right approach. We have already made some moves in that direction. The Local Government, Planning and Land (No. 2) Bill and enterprise zones are designed to release controls and to encourage the recycling of money. The abandonment of a tier of regional aid is part of the some process.
There is no point in central Government reducing public intervention at national level if it is stepped up at local level. For example, the Liverpool council seems to be hell bent on destroying the small firm. It has announced a 50 per cent. increase in rates. What commercial enterprise can sustain such an increase and continue to trade in the inner area?

Mr. Heffer: Is it not clear that Liverpool council increased its rates because if it does not, on the basis of Government policy, further unemployment will be created in Liverpool where it is already too high? The council was forced into adopting Government policy, and it has the choice of increasing the rates or causing massive unemployment.

Mr. Steen: I hope that that intervention will not be counted against the six minutes that I am allowed, and that I shall be allowed to answer it. The city council has persistently refused to increase council rents. Instead, it has clobbered the commercial and private ratepayers. As a result, small firms are being driven outside the city to sites in the green field areas, and that reduces the amount earned in rates. I shall not be distracted further by that red herring.
The city council is also demolishing small firms. Recently it demolished a small firm in my constituency and replaced it with public housing. The turnover of that firm was £250,000 a year. It had an export trade worth £100,000 and a staff of 12. That firm is lost and will not operate again. For 18 months the well-known firm of Panda Alarms was prevented from building a new office block because the council's planning department did not like the shape and size of the aerial on top of the premises, although it was exactly the same shape and size as the old aerial 50 yards down the road.
Conflict between central Government and local government can breed distrust, which prevents banks, insurance companies and pension funds from investing in inner urban areas. The level of public intervention in inner city Liverpool is driving out the people and industries that could revive the inner area. What other city refuses to sell some of its spare land to willing purchasers? About 1,800 acres of derelict, dormant land are available within the city boundaries of Liverpool, but the city council is not prepared to sell any of that land so that office blocks can be rehabilitated. That means that buildings are condemned to compulsory purchase orders, and that leads to more derelict land. The Government must make plain whether they are prepared to intervene or whether they are prepared to allow the city council to continue to destroy the vestiges of wealth in the ailing inner area.
The Government must come clean about the extent to which they are prepared to distort the market by such intervention as the £70 million made available to the London docks under the Port of London (Financial Assistance) Bill. They must make clear how far they will distort the market economy by giving

money to the urban development corporation. We talk about a Government who are committed to non-interventionism, but they may do that which they say they do not wish to do. If they confine themselves to giving infrastructure grants and enabling private enterprise to flourish in the enterprise zones and the urban development corporation areas, that will be a step in the right direction. However, if they believe in a non-interventionist policy, they must recognise that designating Liverpool airport as a C-category airport must be discriminatory, when they give Manchester airport an A category. That represents a move towards Manchester and away from Liverpool.
The same comment applies to European Community bids. We must ensure that favourable treatment is not given to some areas and not to others. We must ensure that city councils do not intervene where the Government do not. The Government's intervention programme must be limited to offering incentives, not in the shape of grant-aid, but in freeing controls so that small firms and private builders can once again create wealth.

Mr. Roger Stott: I shall be as brief as possible. I was interested in what the hon. Member for Rossendale (Mr. Trippier) said. Those of us who were born and have lived in Lancashire know well the textile industry's problems. They are not recent problems. Over the years, we have endeavoured to introduce legislation and to negotiate the GATT treaties in order to protect the indigenous industries of Lancashire.
The hon. Gentleman tends to forget that during the period of the Labour Government his constituency's footwear and textile industries were kept afloat by temporary employment subsidies which were fought for by his predecessor, Mike Noble, who battled manfully to ensure that those industries were protected. Although they were not the whole answer to the problem, they were a very good palliative during that period.
We now face a very difficult situation in the North West.

Mr. Trippier: Is not the hon. Gentleman aware that during the last period of Labour government, more jobs were lost in the textile industry than under the previous Conservative Administration, even


with temporary employment subsidy which many Government supporters believed created more problems than it solved?

Mr. Stott: I am aware of that, but time does not allow me to debate it with the hon. Member for Rossendale. However, we both know that without temporary employment subsidy, which was paid to the textile industry in Lancashire, a great many more jobs would have been lost. That happens to be a fact of life even though, apparently, the hon. Gentleman does not agree with it.
We have a Government who are hellbent on subjecting the whole nation to the Thatcher experiment. As a consequence, they are bound to create more and more unemployment. But we cannot continue to pursue a policy of tight money control, a slavish adherence to the prophesies of Milton Friedman and high levels of interest rates without having very high and sustained levels of unemployment.
During the period of Labour government, unemployment rose. We must acknowledge that it did. But during that same period, my right hon. Friend the Member for Barrow-in-Furness (Mr. Booth) and his team in the Department of Employment introduced various measures, including the job release scheme, the work experience scheme and the temporary employment subsidy, to mitigate the worst consequences of structural unemployment—unemployment which was created because of the decline of older industries and the emergence of newer ones.
All those palliatives and measures which cushioned the problems of unemployment have been swept aside in the cause of the Thatcher experiment, and even in my constituency we see unemployment going up to a level of 10 or 11 per cent.
The Government have to think seriously about reintroducing some form of assistance in the North-West to mitigate the consequences to which they are subjecting our people. They ought to look again at some of the schemes which were used so successfully by my right hon. Friends in the Department of Industry.
The second topic which I wish to discuss has been referred to by a number

of hon. Members on both sides of the House. I represent a constituency which is split between Bolton and Wigan. I pay tribute to the recognition which this Government have shown of the problems of Wigan. However, before we get too euphoric about the creation of a special development area for Wigan, for which I am grateful and for which I pressed my right hon. and hon. Friends in the last Labour Administration, we have to remember that within the Wigan conurbation and the Bolton area those other areas were intermediate areas. That intermediate area status has disappeared, or is about to disappear. As a consequence, we face a real problem. I am sorry that we do not have a Minister from the Department of the Environment present for this debate, because in the Wigan area there is a great deal of land reclamation to be done.
In the centre of the Lancashire coalfield, many attempts have been made by local authorities to eradicate the slag heaps and the pollution of late nineteenth century coal mining. We cannot do that if the Government do not acknowledge that we have a problem. Therefore, all of us who represent such areas are very sorry that the 100 per cent. reclamation grant goes when the intermediate status of the area goes. I hope that the Government will heed what was said by the hon. Member for Hazel Grove (Mr. Arnold) and by my hon. Friend the Member for Oldham, West (Mr. Meacher), who drew attention to this problem.
I end on a parochial note, although make no excuse for doing so. Again I wish that there were a Minister here from the Department of the Environment, because we are becoming a little fed up in my constituency with the Secretary of State for the Environment granting planning applications to the National Coal Board for opencast mining. We have had enough of opencast mining in Wigan, and I do not want to see any more environmental pollution in my area.
I wonder whether the Secretary of State for the Environment, who represents the constituency of Henley-on-Thames, would like 24 coal lorries an hour rumbling along the main highway of Henley. Thanks to his decision, that is what I have in my constituency, and it will not do. It is time that the Department of the Environment took notice of


what the local authority is saying and stopped approving these planning applications.
My hon. Friend the Member for Bury and Radcliffe (Mr. White) said that the people of the North-West would pass judgment. They most certainly will. I suspect that support for the Conservative Party in the North-West is now concentrated into an esoteric group of people such as collectors of Czarist bonds or admirers of English middle order batting.
On 1 May, the people of the North-West will make their judgment on the performance of this Government. That will be the return of Labour-controlled councils throughout the North-West.

Mr. Mark Lennox-Boyd: I am pleased to be called immediately after the hon. Member for Westhoughton (Mr. Stott), who apologised for being somewhat parochial in his closing remarks. I, too, intend to be parochial because I feel that the area which I represent—the Morecambe and the Lancaster area—has factors to which I should draw attention because it knows how to overcome the problems facing the North-West.
This debate has been characterised by two general factors. The first is that Government help has an important place in the matter of assisting Britain's regions but that it is not the solution to the problem. The second general characteristic to which I draw attention is that the problems of the North-West are not bad all over. They are not bad, for example, in the area which I represent. They could be better, of course, but in a national context they are not so bad. I appreciate that they are very bad in the traditional industries, but they are not bad in many of the emerging industries, and I feel that our example may be a pointer.
I shall, of course, confine my remarks to Lancashire. Any constituent of mine who reads this speech and notes that I said nothing about Cumbria may rest assured that I shall remedy that deficiency on another occasion.
My hon. Friend the Member for Lancaster (Mrs. Kellett-Bowman) drew attention to a most important fact in the Morecambe and Lancaster area. It is that during the past year, notwithstanding the

period of recession that Great Britain and the rest of the world are going through, unemployment in our area has not increased. I do not seek to suggest that there is an overall trend which will be continued in a downward spiral. However, very marginally in the Morecambe and Lancaster area unemployment has actually decreased. Therefore, it is even more important to look at the Morecambe and Lancaster area to see whether it can give some general pointers to the North-West region in answering these difficult questions.
Morecambe and Heysham have established two records in the last few months, I am happy to report. First, it has been announced that we are to have the largest nuclear complex in the whole of Europe, which is very good for local employment. Secondly, it has been announced in the last few weeks that some entrepreneurs are making the necessary investment to build the largest big wheel in Europe. [Hon. Members: "Hear, hear."] Hon. Members have listened to that observation with some apparent amusement, and I am delighted that that is so. However, it is also important to look at the serious aspect of it, because such an investment is one of more than £100,000 in the entertainment industry of Morecambe, and we have to ask why people are prepared to invest money of that kind at a time when interest rates are so high.
I wish to draw attention to one or two small factors affecting the Morecambe and Lancaster area. All too often in debates of this kind, hon. Members on both sides of the House call for large sums of money which somehow will solve the problems of unemployment in their areas in a swift and dramatic way. Such is not the case of course. Unemployment is coped with by sustained planning and opportunities to create conditions in which small industries can build and grow. Therefore, I have to report one or two matters in my area in order to demonstrate how this has been happening.
In the last few weeks, the building of two small advance factories has been announced in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Lancaster and two in the area I represent. It has also been announced that the Granada company—I have had conversations with my hon. Friend the Member for Howden (Sir P. Bryan), a director of the company—is


to make a substantial investment in the Morecambe area. It is an investment, according to published information, of some £300,000. This demonstrates the confidence that Granada places in the North-West.
Two years ago the company made an investment in the Morecambe bowl, a bingo hall, that developed successfully. The company tested the water and found a tremendous market that was not merely seasonal but continued throughout the year. It has decided to follow initial, tentative feelers with a substantial investment in Morecambe that will do much for the prosperity of the area. I am informed, on the impeccable authority of my hon. Friend the Member for Howden, that Granada was pleased, beyond its wildest dreams, at the success of its venture and delighted with the staff who have been proved to be hard-working and co-opara-tive.
It is a measure of confidence in the Morecambe and Lancaster area that there have been announcements over the last few weeks of investments of an amount of between £500,000 and £1 million. That is a substantial amount for an area that does not have pretensions bigger than itself. If repeated over coming months, it would mean a substantial difference to the local economy. Why are business men prepared, in the face of high interest rates, to invest substantial sums in any area of Great Britain and, particularly, in an area such as Morecamble? The reason, I suggest, is that business men have confidence, not particularly in the present situation, but in the future of this country. They have confidence in the way the economy will develop and are, therefore, prepared to invest now to sow the seeds for reaping large dividends in coming years.
Hon. Members need to examine several simple factors for attracting industry that the North-West desperately needs. They must look to advance factories. These have been a far greater success than any other facility provided by the Government. They have to look to facilities for premises of industries that wish to set up in the area. This means looking carefully at the rates charged by local authorities.
Hon. Members must also be sure that their areas can provide, as the Morecambe and Lancaster area provides, a co-operative and helpful work force in an area favoured by good communications, as exist in most parts of the North-West. If

that is done, the prosperity that hon. Members desire will come to their areas.

Mrs. Gwyneih Dunwoody: I do not wish to detain the House for long, and I certainly do not wish to follow the line taken by the hon. Member for Morecambe and Lonsdale (Mr. Lennox-Boyd). The hon. Gentleman obviously believes that if the fun-fairs of this country are expanded, people will have some way of passing the time, even if they have no jobs. The ferris wheel may be the answer for some Conservative Members who have performed some extraordinary about turns in this debate. It is not the answer to the problems of the North-West.
The difficulty is that the country has a Prime Minister and a Secretary of State for Industry who believe in the total division of Great Britain. They believe that the South-East, and only the most affluent parts of the South-East, should be supported. This attitude is shown by the Government's attacks on industrial support and regional aid in the last 12 months. I have been fortunate in that I have represented a part of the North-West that contains a high percentage of skilled engineers and a wide range of industries to provide jobs for those engineers.
It is terrifying now to see the rate of unemployment rising even in what was regarded as a favoured area of the region. We are being subjected to the results of the first 12 months of Conservative government. Small businesses, in particular, are going bankrupt. The areas that will be hit by the Government's action are those that do not possess Government advance factories and rely heavily on assistance from Labour-controlled local authorities to build more industrial estates.
A great deal of play has been made since the Budget about the extension of what are called enterprise zones. I learned the hard way, as the Minister responsible for regional development in a previous Labour Government, that there is no easy way to bring jobs into an area that is losing many of its traditional industries. One needs a wide range of measures, across the board, not only to attract new factories but to encourage existing factories to expand. I fear that, in the North-West, the new so-called enterprise zones, that will be pirate zones, free of many of the restrictions on surrounding


areas, will attract precisely that class of people—industrial pirates.
If there is one person worse than the man who takes advantage of every kind of Government aid and then spends all his time complaining about Government interference, it is the man who uses the idea of a pirate zone to boost the economy of his own company only to remove his firm as fast as possible when that support is removed, leaving behind him the wreck of what could have been a proper business if it had been soundly based. The Minister should say that it is not his intention to abandon the North-West to the simple idea that one can attract entrepeneurs, who do not seem to have taken advantage of the great benefits given to them in the last two Budgets, into an area such as the North-West and create jobs.
We are not interested in the extension of bingo halls and ferris wheels. We are interested in the creation of proper jobs and opportunities for employing our young people and renewing a dying industrial situation. Unless the Government change their attitude and their economic policy, there will be a rapid decline into an even greater recession. We shall be back to the 1930s with a vengeance.

Mr. Alastair Goodlad: I, too, congratulate the hon. Member for Bury and Radcliffe (Mr. White) on the robust manner in which he kicked off the debate after years of enforced silence as "a usual channel". The hon. Gentleman did extremely well, considering the record of the previous Government in the North-West, not to shoot the ball more often into his own goal than he did. I deplore the absence from the debate of representatives of the Liberal Party. Not only has there been no speech from the Liberal Benches but there has not been a single Liberal Member in the Chamber. That is an indication of the importance with which the Liberals regard the North-West.
The case deployed by the Opposition against the Government has been feeble. The Government's realistic approach to the problems of the North-West has been exemplified by Merseyside's retention of its special assisted area status, the short listing of sites in Liverpool and

Manchester as possible enterprise zones, and the setting up of an urban development corporation to deal with the development of the Liverpool dockside area.
I have been unconvinced by the attempted correlation by the hon. Member for Oldham, West (Mr. Meacher) who, I am sorry to say, has now left the Chamber, of unemployment with the withdrawal of assisted area status. In the Northwich travel-to-work area, in the last quarter, unemployment went down and the number of vacancies at employment offices rose by over 11 per cent. On a year-on-year basis, from the end of 1978, vacancies rose by over 38 per cent.
I want to dwell briefly on three points which have not been discussed at great length, and which I hope that my hon. Friend will refer to when winding up. They are infrastructure, energy and assistance to small businesses. As my hon. Friend the Member for Nelson and Colne (Mr. Lee) said in his excellent speech, communications are vital to the North-West, and they can be provided only by the Government. At present, we are well served by, and desperately dependent upon, our infrastructure, and it is vital that it is kept up to date. We have seen positive developments in air traffic at Speke and at Manchester Ringway, and I hope that those trends continue, particularly at Ringway, I hope that the Government will will the means of their continuance. We have seen positive developments in dock investment in Liverpool and elsewhere, and there have been positive signs of investment in the area by British Rail.
My right hon. Friend the Minister of Transport has said that a number of trunk schemes will not be affected by the Government's review of the trunk road programme, including the M63 Stockport east-west bypass and the A590 Ulverston bypass. He has also agreed to a 100 per cent. grant for the M531 Ellesmere Port-Chester scheme, and reaffirmed the grant awarded to the M602 Salford docks road.
Together with my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the Environment, my right hon. Friend the Minister of Transport has also approved statutory proposals for the Hyndburn to Burnley section of the M65 Calder Valley motorway and for the northern section of the A56 Accrington eastern bypass.
There are positive signs that there are many plans in the course of execution, and for the North-West it is vital that they should continue. From my own experience, I can tell my hon. Friend that Cheshire's road programme should be subject to as little delay as is humanly possible. Alleviation of the traffic problems of Tarporley and Eaton, to which I have referred previously, and Northwich, Kelsall and Tarvin are vital, not only to through traffic but as a means of halting the congestion in the area. Any delay will result only in greater expenditure in the future and unacceptable congestion in the meantime.
I turn to energy. We have heard about the difficulty of people obtaining gas supplies in rural areas. The same applies to industrial sites. There is no doubt that the current difficulties in supplying extra gas to companies and industrial estates are endangering industrial expansion in the North-West region. The problem has been caused not by a shortage of gas but by the high world price and relative shortage of oil, which has created an unbalanced market and given rise to an unprecedented level of demand for gas.
I understand that the present policy of North-West Gas is to fulfil its statutory obligation to connect new customers, to maintain supplies and to honour commitments already entered into, subject to some restrictions on quantity of supply to new industrial customers. I understand that plans to expand the national transmission network are being brought forward, and that the Morecambe Bay gas-field will be developed as quickly as possible.
I very much hope that my hon. Friend will urge the Secretary of State for Energy to ensure that British Gas, and especially North-West Gas, redouble their efforts, as it will have serious consequences for employment and output in the North-West if they do not.
I turn finally to small firms. As my hon. Friend the Member for Hazel Grove (Mr. Arnold) pointed out, the North-West is particularly dependent for employment upon small businesses. Last November, my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State for Industry announced a package to help small firms, including a new pilot finance scheme in the Eastern region, linking the Department's small firms service, and the Post Office staff

superannuation fund. I hope that he will be able to tell us that steps towards a nationwide facility may not be too far off and that it will be extended to the North-West. I hope he will be able to tell us about the success of that scheme.
The package also included new workshops for small firms in shipbuilding areas, including one at Wallasey, and I hope that my hon. Friend will say a few words about the progress of those schemes. The package also included an extension of the small firms service by way of peripatetic visits to towns in order to see clients, and I hope that my hon. Friend will say something about the progress of that aspect of the scheme.
My right hon. and learned Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer announced in his Budget Statement a range of measures to improve the climate for small firms. The greatest service which the Government can do to the North-West is precisely that. The hon. Member for Bury and Radcliffe said that the North-West had as good resources as anywhere in the country. Of course, the greatest of our resources is our people. We have heard success stories but the fact is that the solution to the problems of the North-West lies in our hands and in the hands of the people of the North-West. The commercial opportunities are there to be grasped, if we will grasp them. That we must do together.

Mr. Jack Straw: In the two minutes available to me I should like to urge the Minister to reconsider the Government's decision to cut off industrial aid to a large part of the North-West, and north-east Lancashire in particular. I do so for two reasons, which have occurred since the decisions were announced last year. First, exceedingly high interest rates are now penalising manufacturing industry. What is not realised is that high interest rates of the sort that obtain at present operate as a perverse regional policy. They are transferring millions of pounds from the manufacturing areas of the country, from the North-West and the North, to the City of London and the South-East. That is the effect of the Government's industrial policy. It transfers money from manufacturing firms to the banks, and I ask the Government to transfer some of those profits back the other way.
Secondly, officials of the Treasury have given evidence before a Committee of this House that employmeit in manufacturing industry will decline by 5 per cent. over the next year. On my estimate, that will mean a reduction in the number of jobs in the North-West of at least 30,000. Those jobs will go during the next year if the Government's own prediction about the effect of their Budget comes true. Does the Minister agree that if that happens there will be an overwhelming case for the Government reintervening and changing their industrial policy? All of us want industry in the North-West to succeed. It is the belief of Labour Members that Government policies are seriously damaging industry's ability to succeed.

Mr. Charles R. Morris: I preface my contribution to this debate by joining hon. Members on both sides of the House who have congratulated my hon. Friend the Member for Bury and Radcliffe (Mr. White) on what was a thoughtful and perceptive speech. It reflected on his ability and on the wisdom of the electors of Bury and Radcliffe, who returned him to this House so convincingly at the general election.
This has been a good and hard-hitting debate on the problems facing the North-West. I believe that my parliamentary colleagues have mounted a formidable—indeed, unanswerable—case for a more positive response from the Government to the major problems which currently exist in the North-West region.
My hon. Friend the Member for Bury and Radcliffe reminded us that Lancashire and the North-West were the cradle of the world's first industrial revolution. One can perhaps describe Lancashire and the North-West as the world's first enterprise zone, but the sad reality is that in so many areas of the region we are still living with the industrial obsolescence and urban dereliction which flowed from Britain's Industrial Revolution.
I have noted the concern from both sides of the House which has been expressed during the debate, a concern which in no way wishes to make comments which reflect to the detriment of Lancashire and the North-West. I understand and share those feelings. I accept that Lancastrians, Merseysiders and other communities in the North-West are a

proud industrious people, but I tell all hon. Members that we cannot close our minds to the problems of the North-West; we cannot ignore the realities of life for the people whom we represent in this House.
Understandably, my hon. Friends have expressed anger, anxiety and concern about industrial contraction and the growing unemployment now manifesting itself in the region. My hon. Friend the Member for Bury and Radcliffe, who opened the debate, rightly drew attention to the problems of the textile industry. We have witnessed the virtual decimation of the Lancashire textile industry as 260,000 jobs have been lost in recent years. Only 65,500 jobs now remain of the 326,000 jobs that once existed in the industry.
I am bound to warn the Government that the plight of the Lancashire textile industry has never been more critical. I do not need to remind the House of the Government-sponsored streamlined planning of over 20 years ago which closed 400 mills and threw thousands of mill workers out of their jobs in a bid to create a modern and viable textile industry.
Mill workers recognised and accepted the need for industrial change, as my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Accrington (Mr. Davidson) pointed out. Those workers accepted the need for change. They accepted shift-working. They have worked in co-operation with management, with the result that industrial relations in the Lancashire textile industry have been, and are, an example to many other industries. Yet mill workers find that mills are still closing at the rate of one a week. Is it any wonder that they believe that they have had a raw deal and that they feel that they have been let down? That is the background to the ominous warning given by Joe Quinn, the distinguished president of the Amalgamated Union of Textile Workers, at Blackpool the other day. He said that unless drastic action was taken to curb imports the industry could face extinction.
Along with my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Accrington, I do not suggest that the Government are responsible for all the difficulties confronting the British textile industry. However, I say that the Secretary of State for Trade seems, as I listen to him in this House, to reflect an attitude almost of complacency about the problems of the industry. We


all know that those problems do not all flow from low-cost imports from underdeveloped countries.
I quote from an article by Sydney Rothwell, the commercial director of the British Textile Employers Association, in which he referred to problems arising from the fact that a number of Mediterranean companies enjoy associated status within the Common Market, which allows them to participate in the free circulation of imports within the Community. The articles states, that those associates have
proved to be the least satisfactory area of control. Breaches of agreed or notified limits have been frequent. A particularly flagrant example of breaching an agreed ceiling is that of Turkish cotton yarn.
Mr. Rothwell went on to deal with the problems associated with outward processing.
The practices to which I have referred cause major concern in Lancashire. They rank alongside the difficulties posed by those countries currently negotiating for, or taking up, full membership of the Common Market. I refer to Greece, Spain and Portugal. Some transitional arrangements must be made during the course of those negotiations for the entry of those countries into the Community.
Additionally, there are the difficulties which flow from the dual pricing policy of the United States on fuel, which enables its man-made fibre industry to undercut British manufacturers. These problems, added to the prospect of textile imports from China, are, to say the least, worrying. I agree with those in Lancashire who believe that it is the very survival of the British textile industry which is now at stake.
However, if there are major problems facing the textile industry, equally serious difficulties confront other areas of manufacturing industry in the North-West. There have been appreciable contractions in the steel, engineering and coal mining industries. The number of jobs has fallen dramatically in the ports of Liverpool and Manchester, and even in the fishing industry at Fleetwood. The problems of that industry have been on occasions movingly described by the hon. Member for North Fylde (Sir W. Clegg).
A report prepared by the economic group of the Greater Manchester council planning department last December said that

throughout the seventies the North-West has consistently been one of the four most severely affected regions in terms of unemployment. In the past two years the North-West has suffered over 20 per cent. of national redundancies, the highest of any region in spite of having only 12 per cent. of national employment.
The report went on:
It is significant that it is the only one of those four regions not to have had virtually complete Development Area status.
I believe that the deteriorating nature of the regional economy is perhaps best illustrated—as some of my hon. Friends have recognised—by the number of unemployed people per unfilled vacancy. In February 1980 a news-letter from the North-West Industrial Development Association records that the ratio of people unemployed per notified vacancy in the North-West now stands at 15·5 compared with 8·3 for the United Kingdom as a whole. In the travel-to-work areas of Wigan and Rochdale there are over 20 people for every registered vacancy. In St. Helens there are a 42·2 people for every vacancy.

Mr. David Young: Does my right hon. Friend feel—as I do—that the present Government have written off the North-West and regard the people of the region as expendable?

Mr. Morris: I thank my hon. Friend for that forceful contribution. However, I shall judge this Government on their record. I shall be content to judge them on how they face the problems that confront the North-West.
I was referring to the number of unemployed persons to every registered vacancy in some areas of the North-West. I felt for my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Kirkdale (Mr. Dunn) as he spoke of the frustrations of young people faced with the current situation as they seek employment. Significantly, the figures that I have quoted are substantially worse than those for either Scotland or Wales.
It is against that background that I say to the Secretary of State for Industry that his decision to withdraw assisted area status from Manchester and many areas of Lancashire, Greater Manchester and the North-West and to abolish the North-West Economic Planning Council was short-sighted and insensitive. That decision was a political kick in the teeth for the region and for those communities


there which already have to face enough problems. That decision was justified—as hon. Members on both sides of the House will recognise—by statistics based on geographical areas within the context of travel-to-work areas which I believe are wholly unrealistic.
It was argued at the time by Tory Members that public expenditure must be cut back to reduce taxation. The priority under which the Chancellor of the Exchequer afforded tax handouts to the rich is, I believe, typical of the Tory philosophy which permeates current Government thinking—that is, the philosophy of "placate the greedy and ignore the needy".
I sometimes wonder whether the Government either know or care what effect their policies will have on the lives and futures of men, women and children in the North-West. We need in the region industrial regeneration, not industrial stagnation. I suggest that the Government ought to examine the possibility of a development agency for the North-West. It would at least act as a focal point for inward investment and would thereby generate the capital that is essential for industrial expansion.
I turn to the anxieties in the Northwest about the quality of life in the region. It staggers me that the Government can be proposing and implementing cuts in education, housing, health and hospital building in the North-West, because I am always mindful of the point made in the "Strategic Plan for the North-West", published in 1975:
The North West is clearly in need of considerably more effort and resources before a state of balance can be claimed; until this need is met, the region will continue to be left behind the more favoured regions and its economy and quality of life will continue to suffer... at least a decade of special effort is necessary to establish a reasonable balance between the North West and other regions.
We are halfway through that envisaged decade of special effort.
I would like to quote from a briefing prepared by the North-West regional health authority:
If you live in the North Western Region, your expected life span will probably be shorter than the average for England and Wales by at least two years and you will be more at risk for certain diseases throughout that life. There is statistical data which indicates that the North Western Region experiences more deaths from

all causes than any other Region in the country and certainly the highest ratio of deaths from diseases of the circulatory and digestive systems … In regard to perinatal mortality rates the North Western Region has been consistently worse than the average for England each year from 1973".
What I want for the North-West is tougher action to curb textile imports, an examination of the statistical bases for granting assisted area status in the context of the communities in the North-West, consideration of the establishment of a development agency for the North-West and consideration of a new plan for redressing the imbalance in education, housing, health and hospital provision in the North-West, compared with other areas.
I remind the House that the debate concerns a region which, historically, has made a major contribution to the industrial and economic well-being of the nation. Time was when Lancashire and the North-West were regarded as the workshop of the world, but many Lancastrians and many others in the North-West tend to become cynical when they hear the Prime Minister and the Chancellor of the Exchequer prattling on about creating a State in which opportunity will flourish.
The people of the North-West understandably pose the following questions: when are they to have the opportunity to work in jobs with a secure future? When are they to have the opportunity to see their children being educated in modern school buildings? When are they to have the opportunity to see the sick and infirm in the North-West treated in modern hospital buildings?
Nothing is more destructive of the established political order than the frustration and cynicism engendered by politicians, who, obsessed by their own polical objectives, ignore the serious problems with which those in the regions are obliged to live.
Political theorists explain that the "two nations" syndrome arises when two standards exist within one country. The fear of many in the North-West is that, for their region, two nations is fast becoming a reality.

The Under-Secretary of State for Industry (Mr. David Mitchell): I am glad to have the opportunity of participating in the debate on the problems of


the North-West and making a Government comment on it. A number of hon. Members have congratulated the hon. Member for Bury and Radcliffe (Mr. White) on the happy style of the delivery of his opening speech and on at least some of the content. I agree with the hon. Gentleman's comments about the warmth of character and fine natural resources that are found in the Northwest. In opposition I visited the area to meet groups of small business men and I was touched by the warmth of the welcome that I received. I have also visited the area as a Minister.
I find it difficult to agree with the hon. Gentleman's fairly exaggerated attack on the Government and his suggestion that it has been previous Conservative Governments who have failed to restore the area. He overlooked the fact that the problems, particularly the entrenched problems of Merseyside, have survived many Governments and have existed for a long time. We need changes of policy and of emphasis, to which I shall be referring.
I was fascinated when the hon. Gentleman complained about local authority services being cut and, in the same breath, complained about the level of rates. He seemed to do that without noticing any inconsistency, but he did it charmingly. The hon. and learned Member for Accrington (Mr. Davidson), who is, perhaps, older and wiser, warned of the dangers inherent in running down an area. The right hon. Member for Manchester, Openshaw (Mr. Morris) appealed for restrictions on textile imports. I shall return to that subject, because it was one of the themes of my hon. Friend the Member for Rossendale (Mr. Trippier) and I wish to comment on what he said.
My hon. Friend the Member for North Fylde (Sir W. Clegg), in a penetrating speech, made clear that pouring Government money into an area did not provide an instant solution to its problems. He is correct. The previous Government followed that policy and doubled unemployment, paying for it with printed money, leaving us with the legacy of inflation that we have to tackle. My hon. Friend also stressed the importance of small businesses, a recurring theme in the debate to which I shall return.
My hon. Friend the Member for Lancaster (Mrs. Kellett-Bowman) drew

attention to the importance and value of the European Investment Bank. As so many hon. Members in the Chamber represent assisted areas, it may be helpful if I say that I recently signed an agreement in Luxembourg with the European Investment Bank for £20 million at 11 per cent. interest, fixed for seven years. Many hon. Members may find it useful to draw the availability of that money to the attention of large and small businesses in their constituencies.
I mentioned small businesses, because we have broken down that sum into parcels of investment of £17,000. The totality of the investment has to be £34,000, but half can come from the European Investment Bank, at 11 per cent. interest, plus 1 to 2 per cent. insurance cover against changes in the exchange rate—a risk that most businesses would wish to cover against. Against the background of current interest rates, that is a valuable provision.

Mr. Arthur Davidson: Is this restricted to assisted areas?

Mr. Mitchell: Yes, it is restricted to assisted areas. There is, therefore, a large area of opportunity. Existing assisted areas can come forward now with their requests. I shall be happy to help the hon. and learned Gentleman if he has any constituency problems.
The hon. Member for Lancaster also drew attention to some units of CoSIRA which were to be built just outside Lancaster, and was distressed that the Department of the Environment was not enthusiastic about that project. The whole purpose of CoSIRA is to help in the rural areas, and particularly in the matter of rural depopulation. It is difficult to see an area that is only three miles outside a major town as being genuinely representative of the problems of the rural area and rural depopulation.
The hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton (Mr. Marks) expressed his concern about education, and I shall draw his remarks to the attention of my right hon. and learned Friend the Secretary of State for Education and Science.
My hon. Friend the Member for Hazel Grove (Mr. Arnold) talked about the importance of small businesses, and I shall return to that subject. He also referred to the very important question of the derelict land clearance areas. There


is automatically a 100 per cent. grant in the assisted areas, and in relation to the ex-assisted areas the 100 per cent. grant becomes available if they are declared as derelict land clearance areas. The Department of Industry does the designation and the Department of the Environment pays the money. We are at the moment considering the matter in depth and a statement will be made as soon as possible.
The hon. Member for Preston, South (Mr. Thome) made an interesting contribution but it was a somewhat difficult theme to follow. His suggestion that the Tories seek to destroy the Welfare State is a total misrepresentation of what we are about. I have sat in this House for 16 years, and nothing has disturbed me more than the way in which standards of welfare in pensions and hospitals on the Continent have gone ahead so much faster than our standards in this country.
I ask myself why that is so, and the answer is very simple. It is because people on the Continent have been concerned about how to create wealth and about encouraging industry and commerce, whereas in this country we have been concerned only about how much we can get out. I must say to the hon. Member—unfortunately he is out of the Chamber at the moment—that one has to bake one's cake before one can eat it. That is an essential part of the common-sense approach to the problems that we face.
My hon. Friend the Member for Nelson and Colne (Mr. Lee) proposed that the Department of Trade should have the loan of some textile executives to help in dealing with the problem of investigating dumping. That is a very interesting and useful suggestion. I should like him to come to see me and discuss this with me in some detail very shortly. My hon. Friend also called for an initiative by the banks in enterprise zones. That was a thoughtful and thought-provoking suggestion, demonstrating the value of debates of this sort.
My hon. Friend the Member for Preston, North (Mr. Atkins) drew attention to the need for lower rates in order to attract business into a particular area. He revealed that the Preston borough, which has a Conservative-controlled council, is

the lowest rated authority in the United Kingdom, and has achieved this at the same time as improving its services. As a result, many businesses now want to go to Preston. I can well understand not only his "commercial" for Preston but the success that Preston is achieving in attracting businesses.
The hon. Member for Stockport, South (Mr. McNally) complained about inflation and minimum lending rate. It was like complaining about a disease and about the treatment prescribed by the doctor for dealing with it—a somewhat irrational attitude to take.

Mr. McNally: It is killing the patient.

Mr. Mitchell: I suggest to the hon. Member that the full extent and the full seriousness of the disease were not apparent at the time of the last general election. I put no blame on Labour Members for not recognising it. The reality is that it takes from 18 months to two years for the increase in the money supply to come through in rip-roaring inflation. We are now coming up to the high tide of the inflation that was peddled by Labour Members when their party was in office.
My hon. Friend the Member for Rossendale—who is assiduous in his attention to the problems of the valley that he represents—talked about the MFA and drew attention to the fact that it does not solve all the problems of the textile industry. We recognise that textiles are under great pressure at the moment. The longer I have been a Minister, the more I have come to believe that the MFA was oversold to the industry as being a panacea for all its problems, whereas it presents many very serious difficulties for the textile industry in its operation at the present time.
My hon. Friend referred to the footwear industry and to his concern about the working of the retail commitment and the problems of imports. I have recently met the footwear EDC and I have been to see the Footwear Trade Association. I plan to visit the trade union at its headquarters. I have held a number of constructive discussions and I understand that it is coming forward with certain proposals.
My hon. Friend the Member for Morcambe and Lonsdale (Mr. Lennox-Boyd) talked about the way in which his constituency has seen an increase in employment at a time of world recession. He


is to be congratulated, and so is the prudent local authority that has succeeded in keeping the rate down in his area.
My hon. Friend the Member for Northwich (Mr. Goodlad) referred to infrastructure and to the need for an end to road congestion. I shall write to the Minister of Transport to draw his attention to my hon. Friend's points. My hon. Friend will recognise that his point about gas supplies is a matter for the Department of Energy. I shall draw its attention to his point.
Throughout the debate there have been recurring themes related to the need for assisted area status—as if it were some sort of virility symbol—the importance of small businesses in job creation, and the role of local authorities.
The whole concept of the changes that my right hon. Friend has made in the assisted areas has been attacked but one after another Members have admitted that after so many years the problems of the assisted areas remain the same. One hon. Member referred to the 1930s. The real worry and concern is that, in looking at the areas which in the 1930s were at the heart of the problems of the depressed areas, we find that far too many of them today are the special development areas. Clearly, we have not yet succeeded in resolving these problems.
The hon. Member for Liverpool, Kirk-dale (Mr. Dunn) called for a reappraisal of Government policy. We have reappraised Government policy. That is why we brought in the changes which concentrate the assistance on the special development areas in a way that has not been done before. The hon. Member should realise that when we came to office we found that 40 per cent. of the country had assisted area status. On the criteria being employed, well over 50 per cent. of the country would have had it by now, so one would simply be taking money out of one's pocket in order to put it back in again, and that solves nobody's problems. Spread too thinly, it is of little value to the special development areas. We are concentrating the help on those areas and increasing from 2 to 7 per cent. their special differential advantage. In this way we are at least moving towards a policy that will help those in greatest need.

The constant theme was "What about the other parts of the North-West that are not special development areas, those that are to be downgraded? " If one takes the whole of the North-West, without Merseyside, one finds that the average level of unemployment is only 6·2 per cent., compared with a national average of 6 per cent. I believe that on that basis hon. Members would think it right that we should concentrate help in the way that we have in the areas of greatest need.

Mr. Straw: Mr. Straw rose——

Mr. Mitchell: I apologise to the hon. Gentleman for not giving way. I started late, and I have a great deal of ground to cover. Many hon. Members have made points, and I do not want to leave them out.
In a very interesting speech, my hon. Friend the Member for Lancaster spoke of the large number of jobs that had been lost in her constituency over the past decade, and the number of new jobs that had come from the development of new businesses and small firms. She was right to draw attention to that.
My hon. Friend and a number of other hon. Members mentioned the importance of premises for small businesses. We have now received, and we recently published the report of an inquiry that the Department of Industry commissioned into the problem of premises for small businesses. As a result of that inquiry, carried out by Coopers and Lybrand and Drivers Jonas, it is clear that across the country as a whole there is a substantial shortage of premises suitable for small businesses, and that there are significant opportunities for investment in them by the private sector.
The Department has £5 million allocated for building premises for small firms' workshops, which it will use in partnership with the private sector. Geared up, it will produce a thousand units.

Mr. John Evans: Chicken feed.

Mr. Mitchell: Compared with what happened under the hon. Gentleman's Government, a thousand units in the assisted areas represent a major advance.
We recognise that that is not sufficient. That is why my right hon. and learned Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer


introduced in his Budget the 100 per cent. allowance for small firm's workshops for three years. Therefore, all the way down the line there is a series of measures designed to help ensure that small firms' premises are available.
The lack of premises may stop small firms from starting. When the premises exist many more people will take the opportunity to start a business. I am glad to be able to report to my hon. Friend the Member for Northwich, who asked for a report on this matter, the progress that we are making.
I turn to the question of local rates. An extraordinary position has been repeatedly revealed during the debate by my hon. Friends who represent some of the constituencies in the area. I made a note of the significant effect, shown by hon. Member after hon. Member, of the level of rates on the attractiveness of an area for the birth of new businesses, the growth of existing businesses and the creation of jobs. It is fascinating to compare Preston, with a 14 per cent. increase in its rates under a Conservative council, with Gorton, with a 28·8 per cent. increase under a Labour council, and Oldham, a Conservative majority and an increase of 15·9 per cent., with Stalybridge and Hyde, Labour, 33 per cent. North Fylde, 16 per cent., Rossendale, 14·5 per cent. and Lancaster, 16·7 per cent., all Conservative controlled—[Interruption.]

Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Bryant Godman Irvine): Order. The Opposition Whip, the hon. Member for Newton (Mr. Evans), might give a little assistance to the Chair by seeing that there are not constant interjections from a sedentary position.

Mr. Mitchell: All the Conservative-controlled authorities that I have mentioned have very low rate increases and are therefore very attractive in terms of job creation in their area. We tend to think about rates in terms of the householder, without recognising that jobs are also at stake if a council increases its rates too much.
My hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Wavertree (Mr. Steen) drew attention to the proposed rate increase of no less than 49·9 per cent in Liverpool. How on earth can one expect to attract small firms and job creators into such areas?
Because time is running out, I turn to the revealing remark made by the hon. Member for Stockport, South which was acclaimed by Labour hon. Members, that it was up to the Government to make industry successful. This is the fundamental divide between the Opposition and the Government. The Opposition pretend that Government-printed money can make industry successful. We know that it is not in the gift of the Government to do it. It is for the Government to create the circumstances; the decision whether industry will be succesful will be made by men and management together—a partnership of skilled men, motivated management and capital, for he also serves who only puts up the money.
The right hon. Member for Manchester, Openshaw spoke of the time when jobs would be secure. I can give him one answer. They will be secure when both men and management can supply the customer with the goods he wants at the price he is prepared to pay. That is the future, not only for the North-West but, upon that criterion, of our whole national economy.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: We now proceed to the debate on Yorkshire.

YORKSHIRE

Mr. Stan Crowther: I am very grateful, as are my right hon. and hon. Friends from Yorkshire, for this opportunity to talk about the problems of our region.
This is an historic occasion—my first, and no doubt my last, appearance at the Dispatch Box. I hope that the House will soon recover from the experience.
What I think this debate will bring out is that the problems of Yorkshire today are essentially similar to those that have beset the region for many years. What has changed is the fact that for the first time, for a few years anyway, we have a Government that have not only abdicated from the responsibility of solving those problems but who are actively pursuing policies calculated to make them worse.
I refer first to the extremely damaging effects of the public expenditure cuts on a region that still has, despite the efforts of the local authorities, a substantial amount of substandard housing, long waiting lists for houses, many thousands of elderly people waiting for residential accommodaton, and a good deal of industrial dereliction. It has many thousands of sick people waiting for medical attention, because of the inadequacy of the Health Service. The fact that the Government axe is falling on the social fabric in all parts of the country is no consolation to those areas which have particular needs.
If it is permissible for me to refer to my own constituency, I should tell the House that the Rotherham area has almost always been near the bottom of the league for the allocation of Health Service resources, if not at the bottom. Under the Labour Government there was a levelling up process. We were making some progress. That has now all gone by the board, and the area health authority faces an impossible task. Many vitally needed schemes are having to be shelved.
An area of heavy industry, where many people work in hard and dangerous jobs and therefore where the incidence of industrial injury and industry-related diseases, such as bronchitis and emphysema, is necessarily higher than the

national average, should receive more than the national average of resources. It should receive more resources than those areas that do not suffer from those problems, but that is not what is happening.
Turning to the industrial scene, I am sure that we all agree with the Under-Secretary of State for Industry that in the end everything depends upon the creation of wealth by industry. That is absolutely true.
Yorkshire faces many difficulties in the industrial sphere, not the least of which is highly subsidised competition from abroad. In common with other areas, we face one apparently insurmountable problem—the total intransigence, the hard-faced obduracy, of the Secretary of State for Industry which leads him to believe that any kind of Government support for industry is some form of original sin, even when giving support is manifestly in the national interest and when failing to give support will mean that companies go out of business, that jobs are lost and that the balance of payments is further damaged.
I am pleased to note recently that the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food does not agree with that view. According to The Guardian on Friday he told a conference of the Food Manufacturers Federation:
If you are in competition with an industry from overseas which has the support and collaboration of its Government, and you do not, you will normally lose.
That is absolutely true. The right hon. Gentleman went on to point out that in France, Germany and Japan industry and Government work together against foreign competition. That is also true. I hope that the right hon. Gentleman can persuade his Cabinet colleagues that British industry also needs and deserves some support from the Government.
It is not a matter of asking that British companies and workers should have unfair advantages over foreign competitors. We are saying only that they should be able to compete on equal terms. If we once arrived at that position, the industrial picture in Yorkshire would be very different from what it is today.
I could quote many examples, as could my right hon. and hon. Friends, but I shall mention only one—the process plant industry, which includes an important


company in my constituency. That industry has been suffering heavily from competition from foreign firms which are able to submit tenders for the supply of capital equipment for projects in our assisted areas, where taxpayers are contributing to the costs, which can be shown to be little, if any, more than the actual cost of the materials.
The Secretary of State refuses to intervene on the industry's behalf. He applies this same philosophy to every area for which he is responsible, including the steel industry, where his inflexibility caused a dispute which has done immense damage to the industry—damage from which it will take the industry a very long time to recover, if it ever does.
The right hon. Gentleman knew what he was doing. He did it deliberately. I believe that one of his ambitions is to preside over the dismemberment of the publicly owned steel industry. I want him to know—and I hope that his hon. Friends will tell him—that he will not be forgiven for the social distress that he callously inflicted upon the steel areas in the relentless pursuit of his own ideology. Time will tell what further horrors the Government have in store for the steel industry. But it is time for Ministers to understand that they must stop insulting my constituents, for example, with lectures about productivity when these men have smashed world production records time and again.
The community has paid a heavy price for that high level of productivity in my area. The price has included the loss of 11,000 jobs.
That sort of thing highlights the need for an effective regional policy. I am not pretending that the Yorkshire and Humberside region as a whole has an unemployment level substantially higher than the national average. It has not. It is marginally higher. There are a number of reasons for that. One is the efforts made by industry, trade unions, local authorities and the Yorkshire and Humberside Development Association, of which I was the chairman for a number of years, to generate new economic activity in the region.
Another less joyful reason is outward migration. For decades now we have

lost thousands of people moving out of Yorkshire to look for employment elsewhere. If they had not moved out, unemployment in Yorkshire today would be much higher than it is. The figure for the region is 6·2 per cent., but that hides some serious variations. In my area it is now 8·8 per cent., which is almost half as much again as the national average. My hon. Friend the Member for Rother Valley (Mr. Hardy), who unfortunately is unable to be here tonight, has told me that it is now 9·3 per cent. in Maltby and that he estimates that it is 11·5 per cent. in Dinnington.
Yet, in Sheffield, where I remind my hon. Friends from that area that the unemployment level is traditionally well below the national average, the Government have decided to establish one of their so-called enterprise zones—a sort of Dodge City without Wyatt Earp, a free-for-all area where industrialists and developers will be relieved of what some call bureacratic interference and what others call the necessary protection for the public and workers. I do not think that this kind of thing will work anyway. But, if it does work in Sheffield, it must detract from the creation of jobs in other parts of South Yorkshire where unemployment levels are much higher.
It is nonsense to argue, as the Secretary of State does, that the problems of regional economic decline can in some miraculous way be solved by the operation of market forces. It was the operation of market forces that caused the problems in the first place.
It could be said that I am guilty of base ingratitude because the Secretary of State has made my area a development area. But a development area under the new regime has little, if any, net benefit over the intermediate areas of the old one. Although the old regional policy operated by the previous Labour Government and by the previous Conservative Government—since 1972 anyway-helped, it certainly failed to come anywhere near to solving the problem.
I do not know whether it is permissible for Members to quote from their maiden speeches. If it is permissible, I propose to remind the House of one sentence in my maiden speech, nearly four years ago, when I said:
It is now manifestly obvious that only public intervention on a vast scale can get rid of


this problem of regional unemployment"—[Official Report, 7 July 1976; Vol. 914, c. 1430.]
Nothing that has happened since then has convinced me that I was wrong.
I had great hopes at one time that the National Enterprise Board would be used as an instrument of regional policy to pump public investment into new growth industries in the regions. But, now that has been emasculated, those hopes are dashed. Until some Government are prepared to take control of what the late Aneurin Bevan called the commanding heights of the economy and to use that control in the public interest, the problems of Yorkshire—indeed, the problems of the country—will not be solved.
Our region is not a begging bowl region. We are not asking for handouts. We say that there is a vast potential that is not being used, that is not being properly exploited, because of lack of imagination, initiative and investment in growth industries on the part of people who sit in cosy offices in Whitehall and in the City of London and think that Scotland starts at Potters Bar.
Yorkshire has made an incalculable contribution to the nation's economic welfare in the past. It is difficult to imagine how Britain could have become a great manufacturing nation without Yorkshire coal and steel, how the nation could have been clothed without Yorkshire wool or fed without the products of Yorkshire agriculture or the fishing fleets of the Humber ports. Yorkshire is still the nation's powerhouse. I have no doubt that the traditional grit and resilience of Yorkshire men and women will get us through these present difficulties.
However, there is no doubt that the combination of the Government's industrial, social and financial policies—their refusal to accept any real responsibility for the future of our industries or the creation of new employment, the record interest rates, which inhibit private investment and which are driving small firms into bankruptcy, no matter how the Government may protest about their support for small firms, the slaughter of the housing investment programme and the vicious attacks on the health, education and social services—must necessarily mean that the prospects for those areas of Yorkshire where the needs are exceptionally heavy and where the demand for services is par-

ticularly high will remain very bleak as long as this Government remain in power.

Sir Donald Kaberry: On behalf of all of my hon. Friends, I should like to congratulate the hon. Member for Rotherham (Mr. Crowther) on his maiden speech from the Dispatch Box on the Opposition side of the House. Lest he has any fears that it might be a once only occasion, perhaps I may say on behalf of all of my colleagues how very much we look forward to him making many more speeches from that Box for many more years to come.
There is a point in time when all of us who have the fortune to be born Yorkshire folk or to represent Yorkshire constituencies join hands across the Chamber in many ways to see that our county, our champion county, still maintains its place among the trading parts of this country, of Europe and of the world.

Mr. Bob Cryer: The top of every league.

Sir D. Kaberry: We shall go on improving as the years advance.
I shall speak reasonably briefly, I hope, because many of my colleagues wish to intervene in this very short debate, and, necessarily, I must refer to that part of the county which best I know—around my own city of Leeds. But this part demonstrates very much the overall trading and manufacturing capacity of our county because we certainly had what I might call all yesterday's industries. We had our steelworks in Leeds. We had glass, pottery and leather, and railway foundries. We made some of the best railway engines the world has ever known. What a joy it was to see them running on many railway lines in many parts of the world. We had engineering of all descriptions. We had woollen and wholesale clothing manufacturing.
But they have changed with the times. Other countries now make what we alone used to make. We find now that we have fewer engineering firms. Our woollen manufacturing is on a different scale. Our ready-made clothing manufacturing peaked a few years back. We have some modest footwear processes, some printing, and now, on a larger scale, some warehousing.
We have mentioned today some of our industries which need all the administrative help which any Government, of any colour, can give to keep them prosperous and in good employment. We are suffering from intense competition throughout the world and in many cases we are suffering quite unfairly from dumping and unfair trade practices.
But what we do not want is only today's industries. We want to develop tomorrow's industries. There is a changing pattern evolving the whole of the time. We are getting industries with newer techniques, the newer electronic processes of manufacturing and manufacturing for electronic processes. We have computer assembly firms. We have firms which are computerised in themselves. In fact, one may say that we are advancing rapidly to the stage—although we may not wish to admit it—when we shall have, as the saying goes, chips with everything.
Therefore, I take advantage of this debate to look at the position today and to ask what more a Government can do and what we can do to build up for the future. As the hon. Member for Rotherham so rightly said, none of us in Yorkshire seeks to go out on the streets and stand outside Government offices with the begging bowl. The characteristic of every Yorkshireman is his ability, from his determination and character, to stand upon his own wit and innovation and his capacity to make and to sell. That brings a smile to some people's faces, but none the less it is the true position. We want to have an opportunity, increasingly getting better, to make goods and, having made them, to be able to sell them.
One of the fallacies in industry today is that some people seem to think that one makes and that the process of selling comes at some much later time. We have the example today of British Leyland offering slashed prices in order to sell off the mass of motor cars which it has made but which so far it has not sold.
Therefore, we are against dumping and unfair competition. The hon. Member for Rotherham and I are fortunate enough to be members of the Select Committee on Industry and Trade. One of the peculiar things which has arisen from the evidence that we have taken in public—and upon which the Committee has

expressed no opinion—is that, through our membership of the EEC this country is better able to present a case against dumping and against unfair competition than when we were going it alone. It is a fact of life which came as something of a surprise to me, having originally been so strongly against any activities of the EEC.
On that Select Committee, we are examining the question—it has been publicised—why this country does not sell more abroad and why we import so much. It is in relation to that matter that I should like to direct my attention to two industries alone. The question why we do not sell more abroad calls immediately into consideration the question of leadership at every section and every stage of our manufacturing processes. Leadership is not confined to the managerial staff. It goes way down to the very newest member on the shop floor. I should like to develop that point a little further in relation to the engineering industry.
Leeds has many fewer engineering firms than ever it had, but those of us who know something about the engineering industry in Leeds know that there is a constant call for better techniques and for better apprenticeships, for a better type of man who will come forward and take up engineering as a career. I immediately welcome the activities of the Council of the Engineering Institutions, which is starting a scheme called "Opening Windows on Engineering", and which is asking the brighter boys on the shop floor to be nominated to go round to the schools and to interest the school children of today in the career which engineering can provide for them. It is a move in the right direction for better production and the production of better skills.
Engineering as such in Yorkshire, certainly around Leeds, still suffers from the effects of the transport strike of last year. It still suffers from the three-day working week which the engineering union called last August and September. The many reports now being issued by many engineering companies bear witness to the losses which were sustained through that disastrous strike, which gave no benefit to anyone. If that gave no benefit to anyone, it makes one ask: what on earth will be the good of the day


of non-action on 14 May next? I have yet to find a wage earner who is in agreement with the proposition that England should come to a full stop on 14 May. It certainly will not add to our productive capacity.
There are two other matters to which I should like to refer in relation to unfair competition. In a letter to the Secretary of the all-party textile group in this House, the Secretary of State referred to the question of origin marking. I merely mention this in passing. He said:
As you know the Minister for Consumer Affairs is looking into the possibility of making origin marking compulsory for certain types of consumer goods.
I am not concerned only about marking, but about the nature of the claims that are made. Yesterday, I had in my hands a set of cutlery marked with a name that is well known in Sheffield. The name is not unknown to my right hon. Friend the Minister for Consumer Affairs. It was marked with the name of the firm, followed by the word "Korea". I do not know how such cutlery could have been made in Korea when it bears that firm's name. It is an example of grossly unfair trading.
No one in the clothing industry believes that nothing more can be done about the dumping of ready-made clothes in Britain. The Government should show strongly that they are doing something. I urge them to take every possible action to prevent the dumping of cheap, ready-made suits. One could give many examples of dumping. Ministers may explain what they have done, or intend to do about it. However, whatever they have done, it is not enough. They should not relax. They must continue to pressurise those agencies that permit it.
There is another way of looking at the problem. Those who have had the good fortune, by one means or another—fair or foul—to go to Hong Kong, will have seen products made in the woollen mills of West Yorkshire on the shelves of shops. It is a two-way trade. One should not be too ready to complain about events in the textile industry.
If the Government still have public relations officers—I do not know whether they are employed on the massive scale of the previous Labour Government—they should show textile workers what

the Government are doing. The textile industry asks only for free trade in Europe, and fair trade throughout the rest of the world. Perhaps that could be explained in simple, short sentences. The Government may then achieve something that is worth while. Meanwhile, those hon. Members who represent constituencies in Yorkshire should press the Government to pay more attention to our industries.

Mr. Albert Roberts: I am surprised that the right hon. Gentleman, a senior member of the Conservative Party, has not made reference to the cleaning up of inner city areas. My hon. Friend the Member for Rotheram (Mr. Crowther) and the right hon. Gentleman have referred to the "begging bowl". How much taxpayers' money is paid per capita into Lancashire, compared with Yorkshire?

Sir D. Kaberry: I cannot answer that question. I am not a right hon. Gentleman—[HON. MEMBERS: "Shame"]—and if I were, I would take more advantages than I do. Many hon. Members wish to speak, and they will explain about inner cities. I wish to concentrate on the engineering, textile and ready-made clothing industries. I hope that I have done that. I want to go on living in a champion county and I hope that my sons and grandchildren will live there in prosperity.

Mr. Kevin McNamara: This is a sad debate for me and for those of my hon. Friends who represent constituencies in Hull. Today we learned of the death of the lord mayor of our city, Councillor Maurice Rawling. He was well known in Yorkshire for his public spirited work. He was particularly well known in the trade union and labour movement for the work that he did in trying to advance the interests of the party to which he belonged and those of the Amalgamated Union of Engineering Workers, of which he was proud to be a member. On Thursday he would, had he been fit, have been part of the delegation that will see the Prime Minister to discuss the immediate problems facing the city of Hull and, in particular, the fishing industry. His advice and counsel will be sorely missed, not only in the city, but in


Yorkshire. All those who knew and admired him will join in sending their sympathy to his family and to the city.
When the delegation visits the Prime Minister on Thursday it will give her some stark and telling facts about the fishing industry. It will tell her that we now have 25 trawlers, compared with 75 trawlers in 1976. It will tell her also that over 4,000 jobs were lost in the fishing industry and its ancilliary trades between 1976 and 1980. It will state that the problem will not be solved but will be made far worse in the long term if our fishing interests are sold out to the Common Market as part of the right hon. Lady's bargain for the missing £1,000 million.
As a deepsea port, Hull is hampered not only by problems of conservation limits on vessels and the enforcement of regulations but by a complete inability to make third party arrangements without the agreement of the Common Market countries. Third party arrangements will have to be the salvation of our deepsea fleet. However, we suspect that we shall not get the support that we need from our Common Market "partners" or from the Government. When the delegation meets the Prime Minister on Thursday, I hope that she will deny that that is so. However, our fear remains.
The problems of Hull are mirrored in the fishing industry. Yet it shares the problems of many of Yorkshire's northern cities. They are old industrialised cities that have seen their industrial bases transformed by changes in their transport systems, as happened in Hull, or by the appearance of new and different industries, together with the disappearance of the old. Although we have a wide and varied industrial base in Hull, the present situation is exacerbated by a number of factors.
My hon. Friend the Member for Rother-ham (Mr. Crowther) referred in his eloquent speech to the change in regional policy. I congratulate him on a fine and forceful maiden speech from the Dispatch Box. His speech reflects great credit on him, his constituency and the trade union of which he is a member. His points were of considerable importance. Development aid to Hull has been restricted, and other

Government policies have cast doubt on the ability of many of our industries to survive.
In the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull, East (Mr. Prescott), the pharmaceutical division of Reckitt and Colman pays about £2 million a year in interest rates. That does not produce any jobs. It causes them to be lost. That money cannot produce anything or pay for research. Any firm on the frontier of technology must have money for high-risk research and development. A firm cannot carry out such research and development if it has to pay high interest rates.
When that is coupled with the high inflated value of the pound, partly because of North Sea oil, but more because of the monetarist policies of the Government, it becomes increasingly difficult to sell our exports. We once led Europe in caravan exports. Now, major caravan firms have been closing in the area—one, in a neighbouring constituency, which only a few short years ago won the Queen's award for exports. That cannot help either Hull or the other cities of Yorkshire. That policy needs to be changed.
We are witnessing the complete disappearance of our industrial base. It is being chopped away by policies of high interest rates and the expensive pound. It is preventing companies from making the effort needed for further investment. Bank interest is taking up all the risk capital that might have been available for further innovation. Whatever the Government do by means of income tax concessions or any other small incentives, they will not replace the need for real capital growth to provide investment. That will not come under present policies.
More than 10,000 jobs have disappeared in Hull, and long-term unemployment is 12 per cent. above the national average—37·3 per cent. of total unemployment as compared with 25·4 per cent. It is difficult for young people to find skilled jobs. It is the same picture nationally, but things are worse in Hull. Our problem until recently was our relative isolation. Special regional policies must be created to encourage local authorities, firms and nationalised industries to put their investment and work opportunities into such places.
Despite our relative geographical isolation, in many ways we offer great advantages for investment, but, because of the failure of Government policies, it is not happening. We have good communications and a good social infrastructure, as well as a local authority which, by such methods as its new innovation centre—launched at the House earlier this year—is designed to encourage firms to come to the town. All our industrial estates have been completely let and there is almost a shortage of further land for industrial development.
But new firms are not arriving in any great numbers. Some new firms are coming in from out of town, but basically what is happening is a relocation of existing firms to new and better premises—which of course is good for them and for their workers. Although we must look for development and expansion from within an area, the Government should take on the responsibility when faced with such tragedies as that of the Hull fishing industry. They should put real money and jobs into such areas and direct work, employment and factories there. It is no good leaving this to the chances of the market.
The scene in Hull at the moment is grim. Unemployment, at 15,000, is well above the national average in percentage terms. This is compensated for, in some measure, only by the growth of jobs for women in the service industries. But we believe that, with Government encouragement, we can go a long way.
Hull is perhaps unique in Yorkshire and in the North because we know that, whatever else happens on 3 May, the rugby league cup will come to Hull. That is a particular pleasure to me, and might be the reason why I was called to speak, because one of the teams involved is in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull, West (Mr. Johnson) and the other in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull, East. I can therefore happily say "Let the best team win", and I will be on the winning side.
Although that is a tremendous fillip to us and we look forward confidently to the promise of the opening of the Humber bridge—these are signs of our resilience and hope for the future—nevertheless, the effort must come from Government. It

is no good the Government saying that it is not their responsibility.
The conditions in the fishing industry, for example, were created by the Government. They voted to take us into the Common Market and we are at the rough end of that decision. We have the right to expect not only our fishing industry——

Mr. John Townend: Surely the hon. Gentleman will agree that the problem of the fishing industry has not been caused by our entering the EEC. It stems from the extension of territorial limits from 6 miles to 200 miles—and the greatest loss has been that of the Icelandic fishing grounds.

Mr. McNamara: My hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull, East and I remember the EEC referendum, because we challenged people then to say what would happen to our fishing industry. There was a deafening silence from both Labour and Conservative Front Benches. I do not absolve either party. The fishing industry thought that the North Sea would be its little English lake. My hon. Friend and I tried to disabuse it of that idea, but it did not take it on board at the time. It has now, but it is too late.
It is wrong to say that the problem was simply the raising of the limit around Iceland to 200 miles. The important thing is the ability to make third party agreements, whether with the Canadians, with the Norwegians or with the Icelanders. Our Community partners, if such they are, are preventing us from doing so. That is why I say that it was a Government decision that affected the industry, and that we have a right to expect Government to get us out of the mess into which they put us.

Sir Paul Bryan: The hon. Member for Rotherham (Mr. Crowther) has tempted me to talk about the West Riding, where I spent much of my industrial life, but as I represent part of the East Riding, and as the West Riding will be more than covered tonight, perhaps I had better confine my speech to my own constituency.
There, we do not suffer to the extent of the West Riding from unemployment and the troubles of industry.
Although the East Riding is not going through a particularly buoyant or booming time, it can be regarded as a land of promise. For that, one can thank first the people, who are robust and skilful in their various trades. One can thank nature, which has given us the Selby coalfield and a fertile countryside which supports some fine agriculture. We can even thank Governments, who have given us the M62, which is making a great difference to the development of the area.
The Selby coalfield will bring social problems. When a work force of 4,000, plus their families, move to an area which has been entirely agricultural for many decades, that obviously causes problems; but the National Coal Board, the local councils and local communities are working well together in preparation for this change and I see no great difficulties ahead.
There will also be practical problems. The area includes land liable to flooding and we are told that subsidence will be about 3 ft or so. Naturally, the local people, especially farmers, who know little about coal mining, are worried that subsidence and the high water table will lead to flooding trouble.
Also, the Selby coalfield may bring the increased traffic which will finally clog up the old Selby toll bridge. Perhaps that will persuade the Government of the day to give us a bypass.
At Selby we do not have the difficulties of the Belvoir coalfield. The countryside will not be disfigured with huge slag heaps, because the coal is extraordinarily clean; we will therefore have a fairly unobtrusive coalfield, and in the long run it will bring the area great benefit.
The M62 motorway has already brought development. Towns and villages such as Howden, Holme upon Spalding Moor and Gilberdyke, are increasing greatly in population. A number of firms which have come to the area would not have done so without the advantage of direct access to the M62 and the national motorway network.
Having said that, I must point out that the East Riding is not insulated from the present recession. You are a farmer yourself, Mr. Deputy Speaker, and, if you motored through the Vale of York, you

would appreciate the quality of the farming there. However, that conceals the rising costs that the farmers suffer, their lower profits over the past few years and their consequent difficulties in investment. The long-term worry of the farmers in the area, many of them owner occupiers, is the question of transferring their farms to their sons with capital transfer tax at its present rate. It was a great disappointment to many people that nothing was done about that in the Budget.
A great concern at present is the plight of the growers. In my constituency and that of my hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice (Mr. Wall), we have the biggest area of glass in the country. The growers are being priced out of the market by the Dutch, who have cheap North Sea gas. There appeared to be nothing that one could do about that. However, I read today in the National Farmers' Union magazine that the German Government are providing a subsidy of £12·5 million to help their glasshouse growers to compete. The French intend to do much the same at a lower figure. I hope that our Minister of Agriculture, who has been a great champion of the farmers, will bear this in mind and see what he can do.
Nor are we in Yorkshire insulated from Government cuts. Last night I spent the whole evening with the Vice-Chancellor of York university. We examined in some detail the effect of cuts on that very fine university. The Vice-Chancellor did not adopt a defeatist attitude. I cannot imagine the standard of education at that university dropping at his hands, whatever cuts are made. Nevertheless, as we went through the figures, it occurred to me to question whether some of the comparatively small savings to be made were justified by the severe effect on the department concerned. I urge the Secretary of State for Education and Science to take a personal interest in the details of what is happening in the universities. I should be delighted if he would come to see us at York university.
Lastly, I wish to spend a few moments on textiles. For 25 years I was a clothing manufacturer in the West Riding. In my constituency, although rural, there is the headquarters factory of Dewhursts, one of the biggest manufacturers in England, and probably the best. The situation in the textile industry now is not just a


shake-out of the least efficient firms. Some very fine firms have gone out of business. There are firms, such as Homfrays of Halifax, which has a long record of good management and heavy investment. It has not gone out of business, but it has been grievously hit and has had to lay off a lot of people. Although Dewhurst is prospering at present, its level-headed management views the future with a good deal of apprehension, especially with the prospect of low-cost countries such as Portugal, Greece and Spain joining the EEC.
Millions of pounds have been put into textiles recently by the Government in grants and by firms in investment. This has been done to establish well-equipped and labour-intensive plants; it seems wrong that this investment and the jobs that it has bought should go to waste.

Mr. David Ginsburg: The hon. Member for Howden (Sir P. Bryan) made a point about unfair competition. This is something to which I should like to draw the Minister's attention once again. The wellbeing of the area that a Member of Parliament represents must always be a matter of supreme importance to him. Yorkshire Members have long pleaded in this Chamber for a fairer deal for their constituents. I suppose that our electors should feel slightly gratified that local unemployment rates have never been high enough to merit special development area status. But crude statistical arguments are usually poor consolation for a population who have to put up with an ageing social and industrial infrastructure and with unemployment rates perilously high by the standards of Southern England.
Although I personally accept that, despite our many problems we cannot reasonably lay claim to full development area status, I believe that the Government were quite wrong to withdraw the stimulus which, after years of neglect, intermediate area status was at last providing for the bulk of the former West Riding. One cannot really depend upon local self-reliance alone although that has its part to play. It is worth reminding the House that the period of high employment—the 15 to 20 years immediately after the war—was a time of low industrial rebuilding in the West Riding. The marked improvement in industrial building,

certainly in my constituency, which characterised the late 60s and early 70s came with a battery of Government inducements and encouragements. It is sad that all this is now in danger of coming to a full stop, unless the House can prevail upon the Government to have further and urgent second thoughts.

Mr. John Watson: Mr. John Watson (Skipton) rose——

Mr. Ginsburg: No, I will not give way. Normally I always give way, but this is a very short debate and many other hon. Members wish to speak.
I cannot over-emphasise how dangerous the position will become. The effects of the textile recession are inexorable rather than sensational. It is rare for a mill which closes to re-open. Occasionally a factory building lives on as a provider of labour but always of lower numbers. That is not all. Outside the textile industry, other industries newer to the area face their own troubles today. Demand in the electrical transformer industry is declining. The Yorkshire Electrical Transformer Company, part of the Hawker Siddeley group in my constituency, had to shed labour last year, and it announced only last Friday that it will do so again in substantial numbers before the autumn. The export market is difficult and exports account for 92 per cent. of its output. The home market is even worse. Even at this late hour I suggest to the Government that they should give urgent thought to modernising our domestic electricity transmission network, because arising from a policy of this kind the employment offered to constituencies such as mine would be considerable.
Much has already been said about the dumping of cheap textiles from the Far East, and even from the United States through artificially low energy costs. I have little to add, but unemployment in my area could be adversely affected by dumping of a different kind which has not hit the headlines so much—that of low-cost greeting and Christmas cards which the Soviet Union provides in payment to the Control Data Corporation of America in lieu of payment for computer installations.
I hope that, in the changed international situation, the Government will do more to stop this highly undesirable barter trade, of which our constituents are the victims.
With regard to artificially cheap petrochemical derivatives—it is a serious problem—I hope that the Government will prevail upon the United States to accept some sort of compensatory tax. Reference has already been made by the hon. Member for Howden (Sir P. Bryan) to the action taken by the French and German Governments on Dutch gas. The sanctions on Iran, which sooner or later will undoubtedly involve oil, will mean that supplies will grow tighter and prices will get higher. The United States, because of the hostages held in Iran, has a right to expect considerable sacrifices from Britain, but in return we have a right to ask something of the United States. That could be vital to the local textile and carpet industry which is seriously affected by cheap imports.
Two other matters claim urgent Government action. In my constituency an industrial trading estate of great importance—it is also of importance to my hon. Friend the Member for Batley and Morley (Mr. Woolmer)—is programmed in Ravensthorpe, Dewsbury. Common Market funds have been promised for the sites, but site provision, although important, is not enough. Industrial units are needed, and we need to be satisfied that between the developers and the Government and local authorities there is a sufficient sense of urgency to bring this important project to fruition.
The need for a more generous provision of urban aid remains. Older industrial areas are afflicted with highly localised pockets of dereliction and distress, which must be eradicated. It is complacent to remain satisfied with existing allocations.
I should like to conclude on a broader note. If I had to choose a precondition for industrial regeneration or recovery, I would place less emphasis on grants and incentives, and I would put the highest absolute priority on the need for cheaper money. The West Yorkshire area, with its existing—and we hope improving—transport network is ideally suited to attracting small and medium-scale new industry. But investment will not be made at existing interest rates. How can anyone set a reasonable profit target and pay the bank 20 per cent. first? This Government, who preach the virtues of initiative and enterprise, surely have a

duty to make them realisable by withdrawing the penal interest rates. That is within their capacity.
Reference has been made to a strong pound. There are different views about whether a strong pound is good or bad. But we can capitalise on a strong pound, because a strong pound enables us to be more courageous, and to adopt lower interest rates. That is the single most important objective of economic policy today. It makes good sense for Yorkshire, and it makes good sense for Britain.

Mr. Donald Thompson: I intend to tailor my speech to the small part of Yorkshire that I represent. There are many and varied problems in Sowerby. There is hardly a company or industry without a problem, and yet, fortunately, my constituency is vastly diversified. It is that diversification that has turned my constituency against protectionism and import controls, the subject of which I am sure will be raised during the debate. However selective those controls may be, we believe that the retaliation would fall indiscriminately on other industries in the constituency.
As my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, North-West (Sir D. Kaberry) illustrated graphically, my area calls for a fair crack of the whip and for fair dealings within the rules of the EEC, GATT and the various bilateral trading agreements which could, if more fairly and promptly applied, bring expansion rather than recession to our textile industry. In common with other hon. Members, I feel that a return to less usurous rates of interest would help small firms. In Sowerby very few firms employ more than 600 or 700 people. Those companies are looking towards cheaper money.
A more careful consideration by the Government of various decisions and of how those decisions will affect trade and industry will pay dividends. The hon. Member for Dewsbury (Mr. Ginsburg) mentioned Iran. If sanctions were imposed on Iran, many of my constituents would lose their jobs. Will the Government compensate them at a full rate, and will they compensate the firms for their loss of profit? We have been the folly of sanctions in Rhodesia. They will not work, they cannot work and they never have worked, and ultimately it is the working people who pay for the sanctions.
If a "Buy British" campaign is to be launched—people in my constituency have encouraged me to support such a campaign—it cannot be supported by a Government who rely on 30 per cent. of the gross national product being exported. Instead, such a campaign should be aimed at the buyers in our larger retail firms. They control our transparent market, and they can, at the stroke of a pen, make or break too many firms. We should aim our "Buy British" campaign at them. It is impossible for consumers to buy British if British goods are not available in the stores. Are the problems of British delivery and quality and fashion—in the textile industry—as great as the buyers would have us believe? Of course they are not. A buyer who commits his company to a new foreign supplier solely on the basis of cost makes sure that the deal is firmly tied and explicitly negotiated. If anything goes wrong he is more likely to give ready excuses because he is committed and he has committed his firm to the new supplier.
The companies in my constituency and my constituents try to buy British at an industrial level, and they would welcome any help from the Government in directing trade and industry over which they have control to buy British in the same way, within the rules that I mentioned. There must be many areas where we can support our industries in Yorkshire through British, local government and nationalised purchasing.
The hon. Member for Rotherham (Mr. Crowther) obviously does not want an enterprise zone in his area. My area competed for Inmos. It is to go elsewhere and we wish it well. If the hon. Member for Rotherham does not want an enterprise zone in his area, perhaps the Minister will look favourably at my area. We have sites and enterprise. Perhaps our enterprise should be rewarded with an enterprise zone.

Mr. Edwin Wainwright: My hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham (Mr. Crowther) was complaining that Sheffield had an enterprise zone, whereas Rotherham did not.

Mr. Richard Wainwright: I hope that the Government will take note that when the House debates Yorkshire it does not debate

parochial, peculiar or idiosyncratic matters but deals usefully with the effect of national policies and problems on an important and varied productive area. Apart from lifting the morale of our constituents, it is valuable to debate the specifics of national problems in a varied context—since Yorkshire is a varied county—rather than in the abstract as we often do on greater occasions. This is not a "begging bowl" occasion nor one for a vast amount of special pleading.
I shall concentrate on two aspects which the Government could accept without swallowing their principles and without reversing major policies. First, derelict land causes an enormous problem in many parts of Yorkshire. It is a national curse but it is particularly tiresome in an area which pioneered power-driven industry. I plead with the Under-Secretary of State to recognise that there is no necessary connection between the provision of full Government grant for dealing with derelict land and assisted area status. It was merely a convenient linking with which I had no quarrel at the time. However, it is very unfortunate if the withdrawal of assisted area status—another controversial matter—automatically takes away from most of Yorkshire the valuable and not expensive full grant for dealing with derelict land.
Ministers from Governments of both parties who have inspected the way in which Yorkshire has used relatively small amounts of public money to deal with derelict land have testified that the money has been well spent. Since nature and the good Lord do most of the work, it can be described as pump-priming money. In many parts of Yorkshire the effects have been dramatic and useful. I hope that the Government are not in favour of false economies but that they are prepared to see the virtue of allowing some spending programmes to continue where they have proved their worth.
The other matter is more serious in that it affects more people. I refer to national insurance, a heavy tax which is rarely mentioned in the Budget speech, and certainly was not this year. National insurance contribution has become a tax on jobs of major proportions. An examination of the net income budgets


of a number of representative families in the light of what happened to taxes in April reveals that in all too many cases most of the advantage from the raising of the income tax threshold is wiped out by the increase in national insurance contributions which stealthily and silently, after the occasional Government advertisement, is administered through employers' wage offices.
A Government who are anxious to show, especially to their own supporters and potential donors, how much they differ from the previous Administration, should wish to abolish the national insurance surcharge—a gratuitous tax on jobs which contributes to unemployment and bears heavily on labour intensive industries, many of which are in West Yorkshire.
In a positive and constructive way the wool textile industry is trying to obtain all types of Government assistance in order to achieve a fair deal. The Government have the opportunity of providing immediate relief without offending EEC or GATT obligations. They could get rid of this crude tax on jobs which was imposed in different economic conditions and which is now a serious obstacle, especially to the employment of school leavers.
National insurance law was enacted by the House in a totally different employment climate, in times of relative full employment when anyone who forecast today's unemployment rate was derided as a prophet of alarmist doom. The cost of providing the unemployed with a barely reasonable standard of living was then to be borne entirely by industry and those still in work. That is the concept in the national insurance Acts which ordains that contributions shall rise as the cost of unemployment benefit goes up and the number of unemployed increases.
The Government must consider where that will lead in the next two or three years. Businesses which are still struggling and people who are still hanging on to jobs will be singled out to bear the cost of rapidly rising unemployment. Something which seemed harmless at a time of relatively full employment is a time bomb, financially and economically, which is certain to go off in the next two or three years unless the system is changed. The heavy cost of unemploy-

ment should be a charge on taxpayers as a whole and not upon those who are managing to keep afloat in industry and who should be spared unnecessary burdens.
The national insurance burden is also an unnecessary tax on exports. It is a burden which is borne by our exporters without justification. It is also a deliberate incentive to imports. Imports do not have to bear the national insurance burden. Because of the astonishing change in our economic fortunes the whole national insurance system is becoming grotesquely out of gear. I hope that in the interests of Yorkshire and of all other manufacturing regions the Government will give the matter urgent consideration.

Mr. Gary Waller: When he opened this short debate, the hon. Member for Rotherham (Mr. Crowther) referred to his maiden speech. Perhaps, therefore, I may also be allowed to do so, because in my own maiden speech only some eight months ago I drew attention to the flexibility and adaptability of companies, especially small companies, based in my Yorkshire constituency and their willingness to make changes to remain viable.
It has to be said that in recent years, especially during the past few months, many firms in my constituency and in Yorkshire in general have had to draw on all their resources of innovation and inventiveness to compete in what has become an increasingly unfriendly world.
I have been listening closely to what Opposition Members have been saying. To hear some of them, one might be forgiven for assuming that the present situation in West Yorkshire is entirely the creation of the present Government. In fact, industry in Yorkshire has done remarkably well over many years to produce the goods which have been demanded in the domestic and world markets. Compared with the position a few years ago, many firms are now exporting a very much higher proportion of their output. They have had to because of the contraction of the home market.
In a sense, however, the clouds of economic recession have had silver linings in that they have forced manufacturers to look elsewhere. When the clouds lift, firms


in the West Riding will be well placed to lead Britain's export drive.
Reference has been made already to unemployment. Until quite recently, in my part of the West Riding unemployment was not an enormous problem. This was partly because of the willingness to diversify. It was also because of acceptance of the need to change rapidly in response to developing fashions and new technology. The area is still considerably dependent on traditional industries. Nevertheless, it has a wealth of small firms which are able to employ many of those who have become redundant, especially if they possess the skills which are needed. It has to be said now, however—and this has come about only in the last month or two—that the threat of unemployment has become more real and that for many it is already a fact of life.
The Scottish carpet manufacturer BMK, is in the process of running down its factory which used to employ 300 people at Liversedge, and it is retreating to Kilmarnock, with the loss of those jobs. Other companies, not all of them in textiles, are no longer taking on new employees and employ far fewer than they did a year or so ago. The short-time working compensation scheme, which was rightly retained by this Government, is keeping many men and women in work, especially in the carpet industry in Brighouse.
We have already heard reference made by my hon. Friend the Member for Sowerby (Mr. Thompson) to protection. Listening to some Opposition Members, one might assume that textile industries enjoyed no protection at present. In fact the clothing and textile industries enjoy very considerable protection, with 95 per cent. of low cost imports subject to actual or potential restraints, and many new quotas have been imposed since this Government came into office.
To a considerable extent, the environment in which our manufacturers in Yorkshire operate is determined by the European Economic Community. In February, the EEC Commission agreed to the British request for quotas of imports on polyester filament yarn and nylon carpet yarn. It is unfortunate that carpets are not subject to quota and that the EEC Commission turned down our request for a quota to be imposed on carpets from non-EEC sources, the proportion of which has in-

creased greatly during the past few months.
It should be recognised that the situation in the carpet industry is becoming increasingly difficult. Low demand is at the root of the problem, but, in addition, one has what is perhaps the straw which is in danger of breaking the camel's back. I refer, of course, to the imports of tufted carpets from the United States based on their low-cost raw materials. Since the EEC decision was announced, the advertising of carpets imported from the United States has been stepped up greatly. It is becoming clear that the equivalent figures for 1980 will be much higher.
I received a letter today from the managing director of Heckmondwike Carpets. He pointed out that imports from the United States in January and February of this year were about three times higher than for the corresponding period in 1979. With this situation, any delay in taking action could be fatal. I hope that the Department of Trade is watching it carefully and will not waste any time in drawing the Commission's attention to any deterioration.
It must be stressed that Yorkshire industry has no wish to be sheltered from world trade, providing it is fair trade. We look to the Government to take up cases of dumping and inadequate or incorrect marks of origin wherever they occur. But I am encouraged by statements by the Secretary of State for Trade recently and by the assurances which he has given that he will take up cases of this kind wherever they occur.
The Government should also be congratulated on continuing to support the youth opportunities programme. The latest figures provided to me by the Calderdale economic regeneration advisory committee revealed the important role that is played by this scheme. But at the same time we must not underestimate the problems faced by older workers, especially skilled or semiskilled workers. There are those who talk about shirkers. There are many, and I am not afraid to attack them when they show their faces. But no one should allow their existence to obscure the fact that the overwhelming majority of workers do not want to remain unemployed for a day longer than necessary. Many small firms, especially in the engineering sector, have never been busier, and I see


that for myself as I go round my constituency. It is true that high interest rates are contributing to severe cash flow difficulties which face them in the short term.
Concentration on our immediate problems should not blind us to medium-term technological developments. Over the past two years, a number of multinational companies have announced firm plans to manufacture microprocessors in Britain. All these plants are in the Home Counties, in Bristol and in the central belt of Scotland. None of them is in Yorkshire. This is regrettable, and I hope that in the next wave of investment in new technology, we in Yorkshire will go all out to attract some of this fresh investment.
In my experience, industry in West Yorkshire has not shed many tears about the special assistance given to some areas in terms of special development area and intermediate area status. Industry does not ask for Government handouts. What is more serious and what has been mentioned to me far more often—and it has implications for job creation as well—is the heavy burden of rates which have been imposed on so many industrial as well as domestic ratepayers. If one scans the list of local authorities one notices with monotonous regularity the high in creases imposed by Labour-controlled authorities. They have been unwilling to——

Mr. John Prescott: Humberside.

Mr. Waller: The hon. Gentleman refers from a sedentary position to Humberside. One or two members have referred to towns in Humberside during the debate. But the Order Paper refers clearly to Yorkshire. That is the area to which I wish to refer. When one looks at the district domestic rate in Kirklees and asks why the ratepayers will be required to pay an increase of 30 per cent., despite the fact that the Conservatives are governing that district, one has to understand that the Conservative proposal for a much lower increase was rejected by the Liberals combining with the Labour Party to impose an increase of 30 per cent. I hope that this fact will be well publicised before 1 May.
I have a great deal of sympathy with councillors endeavouring to keep control of expenditure in the larger authorities imposed on Yorkshire since 1974. Until then, councillors looked after their own town or village. They were responsive to their electors and sought the best possible value for their electors' money. The changes in 1974 not only cost the services of many dedicated servants of the public among local councillors; they demanded that elected members travelled to towns miles away, such as Huddersfield and Halifax, in the case of my constituency, to discuss the affairs of places even further away where some local people have never been. It is hardly surprising that councillors often have to take the word of paid officials that expenditure, perhaps on administration, is a necessity and cannot be cut back. Unless they were to spend all their time on council work, they would be in no position to argue with what the professionals had to say. I do not blame the local authority officers, most of whom give good service to the public. I blame, rather, those who allowed lines to be drawn on maps, often in the face of local loyalties, to create authorities that might have been designed to make local control by the electorate, and answerability to it, more difficult.

Mr. Cryer: Those proposals were from a Tory Government.

Mr. Waller: I do not think that either party has a creditable record in this regard. The proposals by the Labour Party at that time would have produced very much the same results as have been seen—[HON. MEMBERS: "Worse."] My hon. Friends behind me say "Worse". It is possible that is so.
People in Yorkshire have a great loyalty to their own county. The disgraceful decision to alter the administrative boundaries of Yorkshire and to move some communities into Lancashire and others into something called North Humberside is one over which it is best to draw a discreet veil. No one with the slightest understanding of Yorkshire people would have done that. As far as local government reorganisation was concerned, certainly in so far as it affected the metropolitan districts of Yorkshire, no party can draw much credit from that exercise. It is normal practice, as this debate has shown, for Yorkshire people to speak bluntly.
Loyalty to the county is strong, as many expatriates living in Lancashire, who have sent their wives over the border to Huddersfield so that their sons can be born in Yorkshire, can attest. But local loyalties should not lead anyone to think that Yorkshiremen are inward looking. Yorkshire has lived by trade for centuries. The world does not owe Yorkshire a living. I am confident that with its excellent transport links, its energy resources and its skills, Yorkshire is better placed than most areas to face the future.

Mr. Ben Ford: It may be a great disappointment to my colleagues, and perhaps to Conservative Members, that I do not intend to address myself to the subject of textiles, except to support the hon. Member for Leeds, North-West (Sir D. Kaberry) in his contention that the Government could do more, and should be shown to be doing more.
I wish to pursue one or two hobby horses. The first is the Leeds-Bradford airport runway extension. There has been an inquiry. The report is residing somewhere in the depths of the Department of the Environment. We expect the Minister to report to the House at some time.
I hope that the report and the determination will come quickly. The extension of the runway is crucial to the good health of the economy of West Yorkshire in particular, but also to the whole of Yorkshire, as I shall attempt to show.
Most people will agree that one cannot work an industrial economy without good communications, particularly air communications. Business men wish to fly to the scene of their operations. We are also increasing the area of tourism. An extended runway, taking medium-weight equipment, is essential to the increase and growth of the tourist industry.
To some extent, connected with that issue is the extension of the Ml from Pudsey to Dishforth. I note that the inquiry on improvements to the A1 east of Leeds has been discontinued. It became clear that those concerned with the inquiry wanted to discuss the question of the line of route. The Minister took that fact on board and decided to avoid the further expense of continuing with an abortive inquiry. I hope that there will not be too much delay in holding the

new inquiry and that it will study the whole line of the route of the Ml extension and settle the matter for once and for all.
I want to put forward a case for the blue route—a case which I have pursued for some years. That is the route that runs to the west of Leeds, along the eastern boundary of my constituency in Bradford. That is not to say that I have any particular parochial interest, but the fact is that the eastern side of Bradford contains a great deal of industrial dereliction. In my view, much of that can be repaired only if good communications are developed. I believe that such communications should consist of the blue route—the Ml extension running between Leeds and Bradford.
Mention was made earlier of the M62. That motorway is now working almost to capacity. I believe that it is the most heavily congested motorway in the country. The M62 was sited in the centre of the conurbation, in a north-west context. My contention is that the Ml extension should also be sited in the centre of the conurbation in an east-west context—that is, running between Leeds and Bradford. It is patently apparent that the Ml cannot just finish at the south of Leeds for ever and a day. It must be continued at some time, and the sooner the better in relation to cost.
I should like to refer also to fire cover in West Yorkshire. The Conservative-controlled West Yorkshire metropolitan county council has proposed a reduction in manning and the number of appliances throughout West Yorkshire. I believe that that was a result of a computer operation which did not appear to take into account the question of traffic flows, town centre congestion and similar hazards. I have met the fire brigade union, as have other hon. Members. My view is that the firemen want to offer a good service and protection to the citizens who employ them.
The fire brigade union has prepared a detailed technical paper on the effect of the reductions, which it has submitted to the county authority and the Home Office. I should like the Minister to give an assurance that the union will receive a detailed and carefully considered reply from the Home Office before the county council is allowed to put any of the cuts into effect.
I hope that the Minister will give a helpful reply, and possibly assurances, on the matters that I have raised.

Mr. John Watson: I am grateful for the opportunity to participate in the debate. I shall be brief. I wish to make only two points. The first concerns regional aid, the withdrawal of which seems to some Labour Members to have been the worst thing to hit Yorkshire since the Ice Age. I do not agree. At worst, I think that the withdrawal of regional aid will have only a marginal effect on employment and industry in Yorkshire. At a time when the unemployment rate throughout Yorkshire is only slightly above the national average, and when—if it were not for the unemployment rates of Rotherham, Bradford and Hull—unemployment throughout Yorkshire would be decidely below the national average, it does not behove us particularly well to demand that yet further national resources be directed towards Yorkshire to subsidise its economy and employment, for whatever reason we may choose to express.
I honestly do not believe that the presence or otherwise of regional aid is the most paramount fact in the mind of any potential employer when he is deciding whether to invest money and create jobs. From my experience in my own constituency, I believe that what is paramount is the availability of suitable premises. What comes second is reasonable geographical access to the markets which a potential employer wishes to serve, and third is the availability of certain skills which he may need. Reference has been made in particular to engineering skills in Yorkshire.
Fourthly a potential employer needs to know whether the area in which he intends to invest cash enjoys good or bad industrial relations. Only then do the handouts that are potentially available from government come into the reckoning. It was significant that the chairman of the regional CBI said, after regional aid was substantially withdrawn from Yorkshire, that he did not mind because "Yorkshire business men were not looking for handouts."

Mr. Allen McKay: In the context of regional aid it should be pointed out that Sheffield received financial assistance amounting to £20

million. The estimates of the Department of Industry showed that that assistance provided 7,000 additional jobs and saved 5,000 others. That demonstrates that regional aid did much good work.

Mr. Watson: I do not deny that, nor do I advocate that regional aid should be wiped out entirely. However, I question its effectiveness, for the reasons I have given. In my constituency we have lost intermediate area status. With the exception of Pendle district council—which is not even in Yorkshire—I have not had one letter complaining about the withdrawal of intermediate area status. The issue has never been mentioned to me, even when I have raised it at public meetings.
When those people in my constituency who have thought deeply about it were asked whether they would like the Government to spend an extra £223 million on regional aid—that was the extent of the cut—or whether the Government should borrow £10 less per household than otherwise would have been borrowed they said that they would prefer to see Government borrowing reduced. In cash terms my constituency is better off to the tune of £250,000. That is the amount by which, related to Skipton, the Government have reduced their borrowing as a result of withdrawing regional aid.
I have been slightly dismayed by some Opposition Members who, at the beginning of their speeches, said that it was terrible that regional aid had been withdrawn and who at the conclusion of their speeches said that the next worst thing was that money was so expensive to borrow. The most important single reason why money is so expensive and interest rates so high is that the Government are borrowing too much money. It is economic nonsense to say, on the one hand, that the Government must increase their expenditure and, on the other hand, that interest rates must come down.
My second point concerns civil engineering work—a rarely mentioned subject in this Chamber. Rarely will I stand here and say that Government expenditure must increase overall, but if we are to have Government expenditure at a certain level I am as anxious as anyone else to make sure that Yorkshire gets its share. In the context of civil engineering I do not think that Yorkshire is getting


its fair share. According to figures published by the Department of the Environment under the category of "public non-housing"—normally reckoned to be the bellwether of civil engineering work—new projects started in 1978—which is the latest year for which figures are available—in all regions other than Yorkshire have increased in value by 13 per cent. since 1976. In Yorkshire they have fallen by 4 per cent. since 1976.
Under the more specific category of "roads, bridges and harbours", between 1976 and 1978 in all other regions there has been an increase of 49 per cent. In Yorkshire there has been a reduction of 77 per cent. The latter figure represents a fall from £77 million in 1976 to £18 million in 1978.
I hope that the Minister was able to accept my earlier personal assurances regarding regional aid and I hope that he will now accept my view that Yorkshire, which has traditionally been something of a national base for a thriving civil engineering industry, needs continuity and confidence in Government plans if that base is to be maintained. I hope that my hon. Friend will bear that in mind.

Dr. Shirley Summerskill: I shall confine my remarks to manufacturing industries, as they form the traditional basis of the prosperity of Halifax and West Yorkshire. Together with the prosperity that those industries have created, Halifax and West Yorkshire can boast of the traditional skills, expertise, capacity for innovation and good industrial relations which are well known in the area..
The Prime Minister has recently made the dismal and depressing forecast that manufacturing output in this country will decline throughout the lifetime of this Parliament—that is, for the next four years. Added to that, we have in my constituency increasing short-time working, an increasing number of redundancies and, since last summer, a series of closures which, despite what has been said by Conservative Members, are related to Government policies.
The withdrawal of assisted status cannot have helped the situation and there is certainly a lack of alternative employment within the area, which is a new aspect, combined with unemployment.
I shall give four examples of how once-thriving industries in Halifax—machine tools, confectionery, tufted carpets and textiles—are being hit by Government policies.
The machine tool industry is the barometer of industrial activity in Halifax and we find in that industry increasing short-time working and redundancies. We have also had the announcement of the proposed closure at the end of June of Stirks machine tool factory, which is one of the oldest and largest in Halifax, employing more than 260 people, who have been given redundancy notices.
Recently, Mr. Harry Smith, the national organiser of TASS and a member of the machine tools economic development council, made a speech in my constituency in which he said:
The industry is so depressed and so lacking in capital it needs a colossal boost. The British machine tool industry will certainly be in its death throes if its share of world exports continues to fall at the rate it has been doing recently.
As the machine tool industry is the key to engineering work and production, it needs an adequate investment by the Government. Everything possible must be done to gain for the industry a greater part of the home market—almost half of the home sales market is dominated by machine tools from abroad—and we also need to increase the British share of the world market.
One of Rowntree Mackintosh's largest factories is based in Halifax and is the district's largest single industrial employer. It has won several Queen's awards to industry for exports and is normally extremely successful, but there has been recently an uncharacteristically pessimistic statement by the chairman of Rowntree Mackintosh, who said:
The combination of the current high sterling exchange rate with a high rate of inflation is not a good basis for buoyant and profitable export trade.
Since the Government took office, inflation has nearly doubled and the sharp increase in VAT has hit the confectionery industry extremely hard. A once-thriving industry is now in difficulties, due, in large part, to the economic policies of the Government, who believe in a monetarist philosophy more suited to the 1930s than to the 1980s.
The hon. Member for Brighouse and Spenborough (Mr. Waller) referred to the


carpet industry. Nearly 3,000 jobs have been lost in the carpet industry in Yorkshire and Humberside in the past three months alone, and there is increasing short-time working.
The situation continues to deteriorate. In the first two months of this year, there has been a 180 per cent. increase in imports of American carpets. The refusal of the EEC to support the request for temporary import restrictions on tufted carpets was a bitter disappointment to the industry.
The chairman of the world-famous carpet firm in my constituency which manufactures Crossley and Kosset carpets told me:
The fact that quotas are to be placed on yarn, but not on carpets, has seriously weakened confidence. We may have to reduce or postpone the increase in output which was planned.
Have the Government now abandoned the tufted carpet industry? Have they no plans to help it through its present difficulties?
With regard to textiles, the third largest employer in the United Kingdom, there is no need to reiterate to the House or to the Minister's Department the serious crisis which exists. I propose to him that there should be an EEC textile plan. Can the Government not press for the adoption of an overall strategic plan within the EEC for the textile industry, in view of the increasing world-wide competition which it is facing?
Other industries, such as shipbuilding and steel, have been subject to a Community policy. What is standing in the way of an agreed Community textile plan which would enable all member States to plan long-term rationalisation of the industry together? If it does not, we shall continue to have repeated closures and a repeated decline in the textile industry. The industry is trying to put its own house in order, as the Government repeatedly tell it to do. Why, at the same time, can it not have much-needed Government support to secure its short-term and long-term future?
The Government's laissez-faire policy, of which they boast, can lead only to the continued decline of the textile industry. I hope that the Minister, in his reply, will deal very seriously with these four critical industries which, since the Govern-

ment took office—partly due to the doubling of inflation and partly to the fact that business confidence has decreased—have declined as a result of Government economic philosophies. I hope that the Minister will be able to offer some hope for those four industries.

Mr. John Townend: My constituency consists of a large part of the former East Riding of Yorkshire. Although it is now included in Humberside, the people there consider themselves to be Yorkshiremen. I consider that it is right, therefore, that I should put forward their views tonight, despite the remarks of my hon. Friend the Member for Brighouse and Spenborough (Mr. Waller).
The main sources of employment are agriculture, fishing, tourism, and other small businesses. We have an unemployment rate well above the national average. Naturally, there was some disappointment when the area was not granted development area status, but I agree with the remarks of my hon. Friend the Member for Skipton (Mr. Watson), that there was considerable pleasure that the unfair competition from the much more prosperous area of Scarborough was removed and that that area received the same classification as Bridlington, although I appreciate that my hon. Friend would not necessarily support that.
This is an area of enterprise and of entrepeneurs and, because of our dependence on small business, the main worry of business men, farmers and fishermen—as many other hon. Members have mentioned tonight—is the high interest rates. As we all know, they are becoming an impossible burden. My hon. Friend the Member for Skipton touched on that subject.
But how depressing it is to hear Labour Members criticising the present high level of interest rates, and insinuating that the Government can bring them down at will, without considering the causes of the high interest rates. They are threefold. High interest rates are caused by high inflation. With an inflation rate of 20 per cent. one can never have interest rates at 10 per cent., because that is a negative interest rate. High interest rates are also caused by the level of public borrowing, because the Government have to borrow, and they have to offer an


interest rate which will attract people to buy gilt-edged. The more the Government need to borrow, the more attractive is the rate of interest.
Thirdly, high interest rates are affected by overseas rates of interest. That is why the people in my constituency seem to be far more aware of these matters than the Opposition are. If they have any criticism of Government policy, particularly Government financial policy, the business men in my constituency say that the Government should have cut public expenditure sooner and by more, and then the high interest rates of today might already have been reduced.
One of the items in the Budget that I welcomed was the enterprise package of my right hon. and learned Friend the Chancellor. There were no fewer than 13 individual schemes to help small businesses. They have been enthusiastically welcomed by small business people in my constituency.
I was particularly attracted to the proposals of my right hon. and learned Friend for enterprise zones. The hon. Member for Rotherham (Mr. Crowther) said that an enterprise zone would only take employment away from other areas. That is nonsense. The logical answer is that an enterprise zone will create more jobs, and will not take jobs from other areas.
My only criticism of the Chancellor's proposals is that North Humberside was not included in the initial list of enterprise zones. It is an area of growing unemployment, particularly in the Hull area, because of the decline—indeed, some would say the collapse—of the fishing industry. In view of this, I ask my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State for the Environment to suggest to my right hon. and learned Friend that the list might be re-examined. Possibly Hull could be included as a site for one of the zones, because of its special problems.
My interest is that my constituency goes right up to the eastern boundary of Hull, and many of my constituents look to Hull for their jobs. They travel there to work. An enterprise zone would offer job opportunities for many people in the southern part of my constituency.
There has been much talk of self-help and the self-reliance of Yorkshire people. I would say to the hon. Member for

Kingston upon Hull, Central (Mr. McNamara) that the local council could play a much bigger part in attracting industry. I have received a letter from a constituent who is in business in the Hull area as a developer. He had a prospective client who would have produced about 70 jobs. A planning application was put in on 27 January. The criticism was not that the application was turned down, because planning authorities must take account of all sorts of things, but that 10 days ago the application was deferred yet again. The managing director of the company concerned told my constituent "We shall not be messed about by the council any longer." That development, with 70–80 jobs, has gone to Lancashire. I have written to the chairman of the development committee in Hull drawing the matter to his attention.

Mr. Barry Sheerman: I agree with the hon. Gentleman's general point, but does not what the hon. Gentleman and his hon. Friends are saying add up to the fact that almost every town and constituency in Yorkshire needs to be an enterprise zone? Does not that mean that the Conservatives are asking for regional development to be brought back?

Mr. Townend: I am not saying that. Many areas of Yorkshire do not have problems so much greater than those in the rest of the country. But, as the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull, Central pointed out, Hull has particular problems resulting from the collapse of the fishing industry. My point was that bureaucracy in local government often hindered the creation of new jobs more than anything else. That is why I welcome the efforts of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the Environment to reduce planning delays and planning constraints.
I wish to raise two other points, with regard to the European Economic Community. The first is in connection with inshore fishing. I urge the Government to keep up all the resolution at their command to maintain their present policy of obtaining a fair deal for the British fishing industry. It is desperately important that we secure the 12-mile exclusive limit, a preferential zone for 50 miles and an adequate share of the total EEC catch. We must also have properly policed conservation, and see that the abuses by the


other EEC countries and their fishing fleets are stamped out.
We have had talk about dumping. Nowhere is dumping having such an adverse effect as in the dumping of foreign fish on the British market, much of that fish having been illegally caught. That is destroying not only the deep sea fishing industry, but the inshore fishing industry.
The second point that I wish to mention was brought up by my hon. Friend the Member for Howden (Sir P. Bryan). That concerns unfair competition by Dutch growers who are receiving North Sea gas at a lower price than householders and other industries in Holland. I agree with my hon. Friend that this is unfair competition. Coupled with a strong pound, it is devastating the British growing industry. It seems an incredible situation.
I ask my right hon. and hon. Friends on the Government Front Bench to see whether something can be done about this matter through the EEC. It is incredible that Holland should be selling North Sea gas cheap so that Germany requires to make a subsidy to its growers, which means that France will follow with a subsidy for its growers. Unless we follow with a subsidy, our growers will go out of business. Surely that is a nonsense. If the EEC is to mean anything, the Dutch should pay the proper price for North Sea gas. If they do, no subsidies will be necessary.
One final point, which effects my constituency, is the question of coast erosion. I thank my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State for the Environment for coming to my constituency and seeing the danger for himself. We look forward with considerable interest to his findings. We hope that we shall receive some concrete help with this difficult problem.
Apart from those few points, the part of Yorkshire that I represent is still solidly behind the Prime Minister and supports the Government's financial, economic and industrial policies.

Mr. K. J. Woolmer: The House hardly needs reminding that Yorkshire and Humberside are very nearly the size in population of Scotland, almost double that of Wales and treble that of Northern Ireland. It is always worth reminding ourselves of the signifi-

cance of our county and of the enormous variety that it represents.
I shall confine my remarks, first, to the industrial situation, as the West Riding, part of which I represent, is primarily an industrial area, and, secondly, to certain social problems to which we should be addressing ourselves not only in Yorkshire, but in the country.
First, on the industrial side, it is overwhelmingly important to our industry that the Government change course from their disastrous policies and do something about the exchange rate, the high rates of interest and inflation which in large measure are now the fault of the Government's policies.
Whether we talk to industrialists or to housewives in the West Riding the story is much the same. Industrialists—the friends of the Conservative Party only a year ago—are disillusioned with the deflation, the loss of profitability, the high value of the pound and the high interest rates which are undoubtedly causing a squeeze, not only on firms which face basic change and are perhaps on the way out, but on modern progressive industries which cannot compete nowadays.
As I am sure everyone is finding as the local elections draw near, housewives who a few months ago so gladly voted the right hon. Member for Finchley (Mrs. Thatcher) into office thinking that she was going to do something about prices, are sadly disillusioned. I confidently forecast that the Labour Party will sweep into power in a great number of local authorities in the West Riding.
Batley and Morley, the costituency that I have the honour to represent, is concerned about all these matters, but in particular the wool, textile and carpet industry. This matter has been fully discussed today. I wish only to emphasise the commitment to a renegotiation of the multi-fibre arrangement with clauses that ensure that the growth of imports is strictly related to the development and growth of our own market, which is essential to the wool textile industry, and further ensures that wool textiles form a more specific and clear part of the multi-fibre arrangement which, until now, has been concerned more with clothing, cotton and man-made fibres.
I turn to some of the social questions. In my part of Yorkshire we still have a considerable housing problem. We still have long housing waiting lists and a considerable amount of old, outdated, inadequate private houses, particularly in the rented sector. The present Government's policy of very substantially reducing the housing programme—by 20 per cent. in real terms in the current year—and policies published in the public expenditure White Paper that imply either completely stopping all public house building or doubling rents, or some variation on those enormities, can have only a very severe effect on people on very long housing waiting lists and those in grossly dilapidated and outmoded housing.
I turn finally to what seems to me to be a matter on which we spend too little time, even on these occasions—the problems facing many of our immigrant communities. In the West Riding, in Bradford, Leeds, Huddersfield, Dewsbury and Batley, we have very substantial numbers of people who came into this country, very often at the request and bidding of our manufacturers, to help out with labour shortages, particularly in the textile industry. We are at the stage—as Bristol has shown us—of becoming increasingly complacent once again about the problems faced by our immigrant community.

Mr. Sheerman: Does my hon. Friend accept the recent report on the influence of microprocessors on Tameside, which like Kirklees, we share as our local authority? That report shows that the unskilled ethnic groups, the young blacks, are faced with a future involving a 40 per cent. projected new decline because of microchips and microprocessing in the clothing and textile industries. These kids will not have jobs. The real problem that the country faces, but which the present Government will not face, is that there are no initiatives to provide the necessary jobs.

Mr. Woolmer: I am grateful to my hon. Friend. Many of those problems will be faced by all people in our society.
I address my closing remarks to the very specific problems faced by our immigrant communities. We had a wave of immigration some years ago, and now is the time when the young people born

of those families, who regard themselves as English, and as Yorkshire men and women, are facing great frustrations in matters such as housing, education and employment, which they are simply not prepared to tolerate in the way in which the first generation of immigrants did. This is certainly true in Batley, Leeds and Bradford. Youngsters simply cannot get jobs. Housing is getting increasingly difficult to obtain. These young people will not be prepared to tolerate the discrimination and the frustrations that they face.
This is a very difficult topic. It is, perhaps, largely confined to the West Riding of Yorkshire and to Humberside but it is nevertheless a very serious matter. I hope that we do not lose sight of the fact that we in Yorkshire have a tremendous opportunity, and one that is not given, perhaps, to cities such as London. We have smaller communities, towns and cities, where many waves of immigrant communities have been absorbed and welcomed in the past. We have a tremendous opportunity to show to Britain and the world how to live together and how to discriminate positively for the better good.
Unless we take very seriously the problems faced by these young people in jobs and housing, and unless we are willing to swallow our pride on occasions and to discriminate positively, we shall lose great opportunity. I hope that this House and Yorkshire Members of Parliament will ensure that we add a Yorkshire dimension to this matter and show the country that we are prepared to demonstrate a willingness to work together to bring our communities and our coloured populations together.

Mr. Michael Shaw: Time marches on, and I shall make three brief points. The hon. Member for Batley and Morley (Mr. Woolmer), together with several other hon. Members, mentioned high interest rates as a cause of our difficulties. That is true. However, high interest rates are a symptom of other things, particularly inflation. We suffer not only from our inflation, but from world-wide inflation. High rates of interest are not peculiar to this country. In deciding when to reduce interest rates the Government must look at events in other countries, particularly America. The


quicker that we can get back—[Interruption.] The hon. Member for Feltham and Heston (Mr. Kerr) is very good at waiting and at interrupting from a sedentary position.

Mr. Russell Kerr: I thank the hon. Gentleman for his undoubted courtesy in giving way. What was the picture on or before 3 May 1979? The hon. Gentleman seems to think that all our troubles date from then.

Mr. Shaw: The hon. Gentleman has made a good point and one that I was about to make. However, no apologies are necessary. Not only are high interest rates bedevilling the situation, but the amount of borrowing by the public sector has remained a feature for too long. I am glad that the figures seem to be moving in the right direction at long last.
Another factor should be taken into account. We shall take cognisance of that factor, along with others, when interest rates begin to fall. I refer to the way that oil sustains the level of the pound. We shall not have oil for ever. If we learn to live with a pound that has been kept artificially high, we shall be in serious difficulties when oil runs out. We must learn to use the bonanza of North Sea oil to our advantage. I am sure that we shall.
My hon. Friend the Member for Bridlington (Mr. Townend) rightly raised the question of fishing. He also mentioned the jealousy that exists between Bridlington and Scarborough. One is in a development area, but the other is not. In 1966 I was a member of the Committee that dealt with development areas, and I put forward amendments to bring Bridlington into a development area alongside Scarborough. Alas, I was unsuccessful.
Scarborough and Bridlington have fleets of about the same size. They depend largely on inshore fishing. No finer fishing can be had by those good boats. There are about 34 keel boats and 20 cobble boats. However, although operating costs have increased by 30 per cent. during the past year, the price of fish has gone down. One difficulty is that when inshore fishermen have put their case and stated the cost of running their boats, they have made far too conservative estimates of their weekly

costs. I asked them to ensure that their figures would show the true cost of running their boats. They are doing that, and in the end they will discover that the figures should have been much higher. They should seek a better minimum price for their fish, because present prices are absurdly low.
The other matter I wish to raise was peculiar to the Scarborough area over Easter, namely, the problem of organised visitors to seaside towns at holiday weekends. Of course we welcome visitors to all our coastal resorts. None the less, when visitors come on an organised basis as they did over Easter, driving their scooters around the town, causing considerable damage and frightening away many other visitors, we must look at the matter very seriously.
We must thank our police force for the capable way in which it handled affairs on that occasion. It is not practical to ban all people who arrive on scooters. I received a letter written by the parent of one of the scooter riders after she had heard me on the Jimmy Young show. She thanked me for saying that not all people who rode scooters behaved badly. Of course they do not, and her son was one who did not. If we decided to ban them all we would be banning many good visitors, who have good bookings at hotels. Also, if we banned them, we would cause them to find some other place in which to behave riotously. We would push them off to another place where there might not be an adequate police force to deal with them, and that would only make matters worse. That might mean that the police at Scarborough had to dash off to Filey, Whitby or Pickering and leave Scarborough unpoliced. There must be some hard thinking about this. The police dealt with the problem very well over Easter, but plans should be made for dealing with it better in future.
I am glad to hear—and I hope that this happens in other towns as well—that meetings are being sought between police authorities and local councillors in Scarborough to examine this matter in depth and see whether organised visitors of this sort can be better looked after in future so that there are no further disturbances to frighten away other visitors and spoil everyone else's holiday.


In Scarborough we welcome a large number of visitors every year. The town has a rightly-earned reputation for being a place in which one can enjoy a quiet holiday. We are determined to keep it that way in future.

Mr. Bob Cryer: I shall be as brief as possible. There is no direct link whatever between a large public sector borrowing requirement and high rates of interest. The Labour Government had a higher proportion of GDP as a public sector borrowing requirement, yet had a level of inflation that was only half the current level.
It is particularly interesting that Conservative Members stand up and say they are against import controls and then plead for them. They say that they are against regional aid and then plead for it. They also say that they do not like local government reorganisation, but they omit to point out that it was a Tory Government that reorganised local government. I say that as a representative of the West Riding who is deeply and bitterly critical of the Tory Government who wiped out the Ridings. That action is still bitterly resented and I hope that at some stage in the future the Ridings will be restored.
I echo some of the points that have been made about the decline in investment in the machine tool industry. In the part of the West Riding that I represent textiles and the metal-working industries are pre-eminently important, and that is so for most of the West Riding. It is a matter of concern that investment in the machine tool industry has been declining over the past years, not simply since 3 May 1979. The measures undertaken by the Government are accelerating decline, high interest rates and the erosion of regional supports.
The textile industry is facing unfair competition, and it is patently absurd for Conservative Members to exhibit such complacency. Not only the Opposition, but the Tory-controlled local authorities believe that the application of import quotas is not tight enough and the antidumping arrangements are pathetic. Early-day motion 546, signed by the hon. Member for Macclesfield (Mr. Winterton), is critical of the Conservative Government, of their relations with the EEC, and of the lack of action by the Government

and the EEC on matters such as the application of the MFA and antidumping arrangements.
In 1979 the textile industry had a deficit of £658 million in textile goods. We are not even talking about vaguely fair competition. In the first two months of this year there has already been a deficit of £131 million, and if the Department of Industry had been efficient, I would have the figures for March today. But it has not yet produced them. Action is needed. If necessary we should gird our loins and take action independently of the EEC. But the Government are so supine towards the EEC—as are their Back Benchers to Government policy—that they will not urge action or take action independently of the EEC.
At the beginning of the year the Yorkshire Post—not a newspaper that spreads light among the Labour Benches—spoke about the growth of fraudulent labelling of imported garments. What has the Department of Trade done about that? How many prosecutions has it vigorously undertaken? Not many, I imagine.
I should like to mention my constituency because to some extent it represents a microcosm of the general points that I have made. The Conservative Government have brought about an increase in male unemployment from 61 per cent. in January to 6·3 per cent. in February. Hardly a month goes by without fresh textile redundancies being announced. Intermediate status is to be brought to an end. In view of the difficulties facing the textile industry that decision should be reviewed for the areas in which there is an important contribution from the textile industry.
The small firms employment subsidy has been terminated. That was a highly successful subsidy, and about 50 firms in the Keighley travel-to-work area benefited from it. The job retirement scheme has been curtailed. That is a sad loss, because under the Labour Government it was a move towards a common retirement age for men and women. I cannot emphasise too much that in altering the job retirement scheme age from 62 to 64, the Tories have robbed many people who, after a lifetime of toil, were looking forward to the opportunity of early retirement. That scheme was taken advantage of by many people in my constituency.
Whatever the hon. Member for Skipton (Mr. Watson) thinks, regional assistance is an important stimulus to industry. The regions, including Yorkshire and Humberside, would have been worse off without it. The 100 per cent. allowance on investment in manufacturing industry is already available, but it is not enough of a stimulus. The investment allowance as a stimulus has been recognised by the free fire zones where the 100 per cent. allowance is simply extended to service industries. Coupled with the regional incentives through intermediate area status that is a valuable contributory factor.
I suggest that the Government restore intermediate area status to all those areas in West Yorkshire from which it has been removed. I am sure that the Government will not do that, because they are set upon their foolish and disastrous industrial policies. The Government might ask "Where is the money to come from?" They can obtain the money by imposing a windfall tax on the massive profits which the banks are making as a direct result of high interest rates. They could recycle the money for the benefit of the people who are on the dole as a result of Government policies. The Government should extend the job creation and job retirement schemes. Public expenditure for that could also be obtained through a windfall tax on the banks.
The Government should impose quota controls and proper anti-dumping measures to secure textile jobs. If we are to stop the erosion of our industrial base and halt de-industrialisation we must examine the possibility of imposing selective import controls while we make up for the lack of investment in many years past.
Before coming here today I spoke to about 200 children at South Craven comprehensive school. Most of those children were in the fifth or sixth forms and about to leave school. When I looked at those young people I felt that Government have a duty to ensure that, when they leave school, they have a job and security. The Government clearly do not care about that. They talk about three years of unparalleled austerity and the dole queues lengthening. If the Tory Government cannot provide a decent future for our

young people let us elect another Labour Government as soon as possible.

Dr. Keith Hampson: I am grateful to the hon. Member for Keighley (Mr. Cryer) for being so brief as to allow me to take part in the debate. I hope that he will not take it amiss if I criticise him. He and the hon. Members for Batley and Morley (Mr. Woolmer), and for Halifax (Dr. Summerskill) sounded as if they were born yesterday, but of course they were not. They merely have a selective memory. They speak as if the world turned round when the Tory Government were elected. All the problems that they have highlighted have been with us for a long time. The problem of youth unemployment existed under the Labour Government. The problems of imports and dumping in the textile industry were with us when the hon Member for Keighley was a Minister. The problems of nurturing small businesses and helping them to expand were there when he had responsibility for them. The small businesses in my constituency find more attractions in the present Government's package than anything that he produced.
The hon. Gentleman did not produce much for small businesses or for textiles. When we were in opposition we made the same complaints about his Administration as he and his colleagues levied tonight. Who ruled the country for most of the last 15 years? A Conservative Government did not, but a Labour Government did. Why did they not apply the wonderful panaceas which they now propose? The problems have been getting worse and worse. The hon. Member for Rotherham (Mr. Crowther) called for "massive" injections of Government aid. The Labour Government threw money at the problems, but they got worse. Between March 1974 and May 1979 the rate of unemployment in the Yorkshire region doubled from 2·6 to 5·4 per cent.
We have to turn round the nation's economy. We have a difficult and painful time ahead of us while we grapple with inflation and high interest rates. These are serious problems, and they are hurting business, but how naive it is of Opposition Members, who always describe the Conservatives as the party of business men, if they believe that we are trying to foster high interest rates in order to help our business friends.
What the Government can do is act as a catalyst and improve the climate in which industry and business men can thrive. In that connection, I refer to one specific problem. We in Yorkshire, as blunt, down-to-earth people, are engaged not in wallowing in nostalgia but in looking into the future and to the new industries and technologies upon which future jobs and in turn our prosperity depend.
In two senses there is an important development needed here. One aspect is finance. I have just had the pleasure of looking at industry in Japan. Bank money is extremely important to fund industry in order to launch new technologies and to get the necessary investment. The second is the linkage between the new technologies in industry and higher education. This is linked to the Finniston report about which I spoke last week.
The Yorkshire area is almost unrivalled in the entire country in the sheer wealth of intellectual ability at its disposal. There is a tremendous belt of knowledge from the University of Bradford and Bradford college, through Leeds university and Leeds polytechnic and York university to Hull university and Hull college, which ought to be a polytechnic. We have to pull together that sort of talent and link it more intimately with industry, and we have to search for ways of doing that.
Most of the basic problems have existed for a long time. They are still with us. They have nothing much to do with this Government. The ethylene cracker opened by our two biggest and most successful companies, ICI and BP, just a few weeks ago on Teesside, was two years late and cost double what the companies estimated. Those are the basic problems that we have to face and, until we get on top of those difficulties, the problems of Yorkshire and Humberside will not be resolved.
I do not intend to delay the House any longer. I am sure that it is a great pleasure to right hon. and hon. Members to see the hon. Member for Dearne Valley (Mr. Wainwright) in his place on the Opposition Front Bench. His presence there is a tribute to his many years of service to his party, and I am sure that right hon. and hon. Members in all parts of the House wish to listen to him.

Mr. Edwin Wainwright: This has been a very interesting debate. Sometimes hon. Members should be honest with themselves and with the nation. The hon. Member for Ripon (Dr. Hampson) spoke about the Japanese and their banking system. He knows that there is a much closer relationship between the banking system and industrialists in Japan than there is in this country and that money can be obtained from Japanese banks much easier and cheaper than it can here, though perhaps in a soft, subtle manner.
The hon. Member also knows a great deal about the education system. About one pupil in four goes to university, and then the majority go into technology, science and engineering. But who has been to blame for any failings in the education system in this country for many years? The answer is Conservative Governments.
In my view, we should debate this subject more frequently, and we should have more time to do so. In this debate practically every industry has been mentioned, especially those undergoing difficulties which are due mainly to the present recession.
Let me say a few words about the recession. It is all very well for Government supporters to talk about what happened when the Labour Government came to office in 1974. As soon as we had taken over, we came face to face with the biggest recession experienced since the 1920s and 1930s. We had to cope with it, and we found it difficult to do so. Government supporters who complain about what the Labour Government did from 1974 to 1979 should bear that in mind.
It has to be said, however, that the Opposition ought to bear in mind the difficulties faced by the present Government because of the international situation.
My hon. Friends have proved to the House that Government policies have failed to stem economic depression and recession. The cuts in public expenditure have produced a situation in which unemployment is still rising and inflation is in the region of 20 per cent. I do not expect that any Conservative Member will blame the Labour Government. This has happened under a Tory Government. The


House does not need to be informed that the economic depression is bound to have grave effects on the situation in Yorkshire. Many Yorkshire industries have been noted, over a long period of years, for the exports that have produced wealth for this nation.
I was impressed by the speech of the hon. Member for Leeds, North-West (Sir D. Kaberry), who showed a tremendous Yorkshire spirit. He criticised the Government far more than he criticised anything done by the previous Labour Government. He proved to the House that Yorkshiremen have a grit that should help to pull this country out of its present economic position if only the Government would realise what is happening not only in Yorkshire but throughout the whole country.
I fully appreciate the attitude of my hon. Friends in opposing the trend of imported textiles, clothing and footwear. These industries, in spite of criticisms levelled against them about lack of investment, have undergone vast changes in the past few years. They were helped by legislation passed in 1972. What can they do when competing against Taiwan, Korea, eastern Europe and the United States that are supplying this country with textile goods and footwear almost more cheaply than our cost of materials? Are the Government not failing the nation if they allow industries to be ruined due to imports and allow those imports to continue? I am not opposed to free trading, but I believe that, unless the Government take action on imports, we shall lose jobs on a tremendous scale.
As other nations aspire to Western technology, there are bound to be clashes in the textile, clothing and footwear markets, mainly due to their low wages and the high technology given to them. It would be foolish for us to ruin our economy simply to ensure that our markets are free to allow such goods into this country. The textile and footwear industries still require Government aid. Nearly half the workers are employed in the North-West and the Yorkshire regions. Large areas are no longer in assisted districts, receiving financial aid from the Government. To become more competitive, these industries must be greatly improved by the application of new technology.
The Government should not avoid the responsibility for ensuring necessary investment in research and development to make certain that new plant and equipment are introduced in these important industries in Yorkshire. It is necessary to regenerate our textile, clothing and footwear industries, so that, not only do we keep and improve our own markets but we increase exports so that jobs are maintained. Many hon. Members have referred to the textile industry. We shall want to hear from the Minister what action the Government intend to take.
I should also like to say a few words about the steel industry, which is experiencing great difficulty. Hon. Members representing the Sheffield area, if they had been called, would no doubt have outlined to the House far better than I can the great difficulties that the industry is undergoing. The steel industry was reorganised in the early 1970s. As a result of the OPEC oil price increase in 1973–74, there was the recession. In 1974–75, everyone thought that the recession would soon be over, but that has not been the case. Therefore, even though there were plans to increase capacity in the steel industry, it was still a backward industry when compared with the technology in steel industries abroad, which hon. Members who served on the Select Committee visited.
I have been to Japan on two occasions and have seen the technology there. Believe me, Britain will have great difficulty in fighting the technology and the increase in productive capacity of Japanese industries, be it steel, radios or motor cars. I do not have time to go through the whole list. It was fascinating, but also frightening, to learn that we were so far behind. However, the steel industry has tried to cope with those difficulties, and the Sheffield and Rotherham parts of the industry have done exceedingly well. Indeed, my hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham (Mr. Crowther) spoke highly of the steel industry in the Rotherham area, of which we are all proud.

Mr. Allen McKay: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way. Does he not agree that it is necessary for the Government to consider import controls, especially in relation to special steels?


For example, in 1972, the work force in tool steel, high speed steel, forge bars and bright bars numbered 17,400 in the Sheffield area, whereas in 1980 the figure is only 5,400. Imports have virtually ruined and practically demoralised the whole of the special steel industry.

Mr. Wainwright: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for supplying that information. It is certainly correct. We must look closely at all imports into this country, but we must be careful because we are a trading nation. We are the greatest trading nation in the world proportionate to what we produce, and that must always be borne in mind. Nevertheless, it would be foolish, imprudent and crazy to allow our industries to suffer by allowing subsidised imports into the country.
We do not even take into account the subsidies that are given to overseas coalmining industries, yet such coal is imported into Britain. In many instances, the subsidies that are given to those industries are greater than the subsidies given to our own coal-mining industry. Yet, because we believe in free trade, especially when it is in competition with a nationalised industry, we tend to forget that we are ruining our own economy. That is something at which we should look very carefully.
I would rather that we regenerated industry and made it more productive and competitive. We must look at the system of management in Britain and at the relationship between management, work force and the trade union movement. That must be given closer examination. We should forget about the fight between Government and trade unions. We talk about it too much and too often. We give the impression to the nation's work force that the Government are against the organised trade union movement. The hon. Member for Scarborough (Mr. Shaw) shakes his head, but that is the impression among trade unionists. We want to improve the nation's wealth, to improve production and to ensure that the work force gets its rights as well. There are some tremendously low wages in Britain today, a lot of them in Yorkshire. We must bear in mind that low wages in the region bear no comparison with those of the South-East and the South-West.
Because of lack of time I will forget the rest of my speech but I must refer to the nasty criticisms of the Labour Party made by the hon. Member for Skipton (Mr. Watson). Some hon. Members have spoken of high interest rates as though the Opposition were to blame for those rates. Let us examine the matter. Have interest rates increased since the Labour Government left office? Of course they have. Has VAT increased? It has almost doubled. Have the banks made greater profits? Of course they have. We must also bear in mind that interest rates are influenced from many quarters. Conservative Members, including the Prime Minister, believe in reducing income tax regardless of the effect on the economy.
That policy has been tried before. A former Chancellor of the Exchequer, the present Lord Barber, during his term of office gave away £5,000 million in reduced income tax. He said that that money would be channelled into industry and that, as a result of investment, industry would be regenerated and strengthened. That money did not go into industry. It went abroad; it went on buildings and on land. Can anyone guarantee that the recent reductions in income tax have resulted in more money being channelled into industry to make it more viable? No one can give that guarantee. Those are some of the reasons for increased interest rates and it it is time that the Government examined the matter.
I am proud and honoured to have spoken at this Dispatch Box. It is the first time that I have spoken from this position and I think that it will be the last. I can say that with greater assurance than could my hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham (Mr. Crowther) because he is somewhat younger than I am.
However, I hope that the Government will take note of what has been said on both sides of the House in this debate. I am certain that, if it gets fair play from the Government, Yorkshire will take the lead and uplift the nation to the position it deserves.

The Under-Secretary of State for the Environment (Mr. Marcus Fox): This is a great parliamentary occasion for Yorkshire, if not for the whole House. The


hon. Members for Dearne Valley (Mr. Wainwright) and for Rotherham (Mr. Crowther) have staged a great double act, and perhaps this is not the last time that we shall see it.
I am sure that right hon. and hon. Members on both sides of the House who represent constituencies in Yorkshire and Humberside—not only those hon. Members who have spoken—are grateful for this debate. As a Yorkshireman I yield to no one in my admiration for the special characteristics of our county, and I trust that nobody will ever accuse me of being insensitive to any of its problems.
I have listened with the greatest interest to all the contributions to the debate. It is no bad thing to pay particular attention to special problems from time to time, and we have heard of many of them in the debate. I regret that it will not be possible in 12 minutes to cover all the points that have been made, but I assure hon. Members that I shall pass on to other Departments those matters that have been drawn to my attention.
I hope that none of us believes that the answers to our regional problems are distinctive to the extent that they are different from the rest of the United Kingdom. We make our contribution as a region to the well-being of the whole nation. We do not seek isolation. The problems of the region are real enough, but they are part of the national and international problems of our day and of our generation.
We are a trading nation—what region emphasises that better than our own?—and we shall succeed or fail to the extent that we are competitive at home and overseas. Artificial restrictions and subsidies are no good. For too long we have sought to put off the evil day by administering temporary palliatives.
My verdict is that Yorkshire is much sounder than some hon. Members have suggested. There is an underlying strength in the economy of the region and we have certain advantages in the medium and long term that will more than offset any disadvantages, which I do not underestimate, that we see at present.
Our central position, our communications set-up and a determined work force, which is largely adaptable, will, I am sure, bring us through. We can only hope that

the self-inflicted wounds of the past few years will not be repeated. We shall all have to pay more attention to the need for adaptability in accepting change.
There may be some criticisms of the city of Sheffield—I leave these to others—but Leeds and Sheffield are accepted not just as regional centres for business but as national and even European centres.
I do not wish to minimise the problems, but they are not all that different from those in any other part of the country. The Government are committed to winning the battle against the inflation that is the major deterrent to the sort of progress that hon. Members seek. We are determined to encourage enterprise and to become competitive in world markets. The Government cannot do that on their own, but if we, as a nation, do not become competitive in world markets, everything that we seek in terms of a higher standard of living will be unattainable.
The Government will help by creating the right climate, which means reducing public expenditure and Government intervention. The hon. Member for Rotherham asked for more public expenditure. In the light of the experience of the previous Labour Government, I do not understand how he can make such a request. The burden of public expenditure and the interest charges on the borrowings of the previous Administration are the biggest problems that we have to face.
The hon. Member claimed that Conservatives see Government help to industry as original sin, but his constituency is receiving better treatment than most other parts of Yorkshire, It is still in a development area.

Mr. Sheerman: Will the Minister give way?

Mr. Fox: No. I was surprised to hear the criticisms of the hon. Member for Rotherham of the enterprise zones scheme. I am glad to note that those in other areas are not as reluctant to seek that help. I should have thought that the people of Rotherham could easily travel the short distance to Sheffield to gain employment.

Mr. Sheerman: The Minister is Yorkshire's self-inflicted wound.

Mr. Fox: I am glad that my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, Northwest (Sir D. Kaberry) drew attention to


the traditional industries that have been operating in Leeds for a long time. Unlike some Labour Members, my hon. Friend pointed out that we could not depend on those industries for our future. He talked about the leadership that is necessary in business and in politics to bring about the sort of changes that are necessary. I accept what he said about dumping—a subject that was mentioned by many other hon. Members. I shall draw it to the attention of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Trade, who has already made representations on the matter.
With regard to origin marking, the Department is considering this very point, particularly as it affects textiles. I assure the hon. Member for Keighley (Mr. Cryer) that a statement will be made as soon as possible on whether marking can be made compulsory.
The hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull, Central (Mr. McNamara) is having a meeting with my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister and will be able to repeat to her the many strong arguments on the question of fishing in particular. He will no doubt bear in mind that the Government have already given some millions of pounds of help to try to overcome the problem. The urgent need is to ensure that a settlement is reached with our partners in Europe. My hon. Friend the Member for Bridlington (Mr. Townend) was quite right to draw attention to the fact that the problem has existed for many years—long before the present Government came into office. The cod war in 1976, of course, had something to do with it.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Howden (Sir P. Bryan) expressed his concern for the growers, and this was emphasised by other hon. Members from the area. Their remarks will be drawn to the attention of my right hon. Friend the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food.
The hon. Member for Dewsbury (Mr. Ginsburg) has not stayed to hear my comments on what he had to say. [Interruption.] If the right hon. Member for Don-caster (Mr. Walker) will listen, he will hear that I am trying to answer the point made by the hon. Member for Dewsbury. When the present Government took office, 40 per cent. of the country was covered by aid of some kind or another. As my

hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State for Industry said in the earlier debate, if we had allowed that position to continue, by now more than 50 per cent. of the country would have been covered.

Several Hon. Members: Several Hon. Members rose——

Mr. Fox: What sort of help is it to areas that need help when it is spread as thinly as that? It must be right for us to see to it that our policies, as announced——

Several Hon. Members: Several Hon. Members rose——

Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. BernaruWeatherill): Order. We cannot have three hon. Members on their feet at one time.

Mr. Fox: The House must know that I have three minutes in which to reply.

Mr. Cryer: Mr. Cryer rose——

Mr. Fox: I welcome the comments of my hon. Friend the Member for Sowerby (Mr. Thompson) on import controls. He is right, when talking about textiles, to make clear that the Government have done far more than the previous Labour Government did to tackle the problem. Ninety-five per cent. of low-cost imports are subject to actual or potential restraint, and 21 new quotas have been imposed since May of last year.
Are Labour Members serious in their call for import restrictions? If they think for one minute, they will realise the damage that that would do to our export trade.

Mr. Cryer: Mr. Cryer rose——

Mr. Fox: Immediately these decisions were taken prices on the home market would increase, because there would be a guaranteed market for our goods, whether or not they were produced efficiently. In the long term, the greatest damage would be done to our exports. [Interruption.] I realise that this is unacceptable to Labour Members—

Mr. Russell Kerr: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. Is it in order for the Minister to go grinding on regardless, when he is misleading the House on a number of points and when a number of hon. Members are prepared to put him right, at no expense?

Mr. Deputy Speaker: It is perfectly in order. It has been done before.

Mr. Fox: Those hon. Members who have been in the Chamber for the past three hours, rather than hon. Members who intervene, are entitled to an answer.
The hon. Member for Colne Valley (Mr. Wainwright) very fairly asked me about derelict land and help for assisted areas. It is a matter of some concern to us, and in due course I shall write to the hon. Gentleman. I shall refer to

my right hon. and learned Friend the Chancellor the financial matters to which he drew my attention.
The smaller firms in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Brig- house and Spenborough (Mr. Waller)
It being Ten o'clock, the motion for the Adjournment of the House lapsed, without Question put.

CRIMINAL JUSTICE (SCOTLAND) [MONEY]

Queen's recommendation having been signified—

Motion made, and Question proposed,
That, for the purposes of any Act of the present session to make further provision as regards criminal justice in Scotland, it is expedient to authorise the payment out of moneys provided by Parliament of any increase in the sums so payable under or by virtue of—
the Sheriff Courts and Legals Officers (Scotland) Act 1927;
the Administration of Justice (Scotland) Act 1933;
the Sheriff Courts (Scotland) Act 1971;
the Legal Aid (Scotland) Act 1967;
the Social Work (Scotland) Act 1968 or
the Local Government (Scotland) Act 1966 in so far as any such increase is attributable to provisions of the said Act of the present session which relate to—

(a) the care of drunken persons;
(b) the conduct of judicial examinations;
(c) identification parades and legal aid at such parades;
(d) new procedures in respect of appeals;
(e) compensation by offenders; or
(f) grants in respect of hostel accommodation for persons under supervision.—[Mr. Rifkind.]

10 pm

Mr. Harry Ewing: Mr. Harry Ewing (Stirling, Falkirk and Grangemouth) rose——

Mr. Bob Cryer: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. We had a disgracefully inadequate answer to the last debate. I wonder whether Yorkshire hon. Members are entitled to a better and more complete answer at some stage. The Under-Secretary of State for the Environment did not even deign to inform the House whether, if he was unable to answer questions, which he failed to do in a singularly pathetic fashion, he would write to hon. Members. It is a convention for Ministers to do that. The hon. Gentleman failed to cover any of the points raised. Therefore, I should like——

Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Bernard Weatherill): These are debating points which hon. Members could and should have raised in the previous debate. [HON. MEMBERS: "How could we?"] Answers given from the Dispatch Box are not a matter for the Chair.

Mr. Ewing: I rise to ask the Minister to give us, in his reply to this short debate, one or two answers on the money resolution.
First, it is very unusual for a money resolution to be moved a whole week after the Second Reading of the Bill. The debate on the Bill took place last Monday, when the Secretary of State for Scotland said that there was some difficulty in preparing the money resolution, but that it would be presented "in good time" before the clauses were discussed. The Bill begins its Committee stage tomorrow morning. If 10 o'clock on the night before the Committee stage is due to start is considered by the Secretary of State to be plenty of time, I can tell the Under-Secretary that in the Opposition's view a period of 12· hours before the Committee stage is due to begin is not considered to be plenty of time before the Committee is to consider very important clauses. We shall have to take this matter into consideration in Committee.
I hope that the hon. Gentleman will be able to give us much more specific information than the resolution contains. For example, what increase in expenditure will there be as a result of any changes that may take place in the Sheriff Courts and Legal Officers (Scotland) Act 1927? What increased expenditure do the Government expect in terms of the Administration of Justice (Scotland) Act 1933? The money resolution docs not tell us.
If there are to be changes in the Sheriff Courts (Scotland) Act 1971, what is the estimated increase in expenditure for which the Government are budgeting? So far we have not been told.
We are aware that under the provisions in the Bill, which is not yet an Act and so is subject to debate and decision by the House at a later date, the Legal Aid (Scotland) Act 1967 will have to make provision for legal aid for accused persons who demand identification parades where they have been refused at an earlier stage in the allegations that have been laid against them. As a result of this new innovation in the Scottish legal position whereby an accused person who has been refused an identification parade or where an identification parade has not taken place and one is insisted upon, I should be interested to know exactly what


increase in the legal aid scheme is expected.
Turning to the Social Work (Scotland) Act 1968 and the Local Government (Scotland) Act 1966, it is not sufficient to put a motion of this type on the Order Paper without a Minister explaining the exact effect that the new Bill, which is still not an Act, will have on those two measures. What is the expected increase in public expenditure as a result of the changes that might take place in both those Acts?
I turn now to what I consider to be the more important details of the motion—namely, the second part, beginning with
the care of drunken persons".
I understand that the Government have retained to themselves discretion whether to give grants to local authorities for the establishment of what have become known as detoxification centres or places to which the police will be authorised to take persons who are drunk and incapable rather than to police stations. I understand that the Government have retained discretion whether to give grants to the regional and district authorities concerned for the establishment of these detoxification centres. Again, we are entitled to ask what estimate, if any, the Government have made of the projected increase in public expenditure as a result of the need to set up these detoxification centres.
Perhaps I can utter a word of encouragement to the Under-Secretary. If he comes forward with a figure, we may criticise it as inadequate. However, we shall not accept it if the Minister says "We are making all these arrangements for the establishment of detoxification centres, but we are not going to give you any money for them." It is not good enough to come forward with a money resolution of this kind and, at the end of the day, when the Bill becomes an Act, to say to the regional authorities "But you are not getting any money for them."
I turn now to
the conduct of judicial examinations".
At the moment this is very much in the experimental stage. The Under-Secretary of State knows that two experiments are about to start: one in Falkirk and the other in the Tayside police region at

Dundee. But my understanding is that neither of these two experiments has started because the equipment to conduct them is so far not available. That is not a complaint; it is merely a statement of fact.
We are anxious and entitled to hear from the Under-Secretary whether the Government have made any estimate of the expected overall cost not only of the experiment but, assuming for the moment that the House accepts judicial examination—I certainly do not want to prejudge what the Committee might decide; as Ministers know, I have my doubts, which I expressed on Second Reading—and assuming that the experiment is a success and is extended to every regional police force in Scotland, of the expected expenditure on judicial examination, tape recordings and all that would go with it.
I have already mentioned the question of identification parades and of legal aid at such parades. That is a very important aspect of public expenditure, and again we are entitled to know whether any estimates have been made of the expected increase in public expenditure as a result of these measures.
The measure of the Government's sincerity will not be judged—I say this to the Under-Secretary before the Committee stage starts—by the determination that the Minister and his Back-Bench colleagues show in steamrollering the Bill through the House of Commons. It will be judged by the amount of money that the Government provide to make sure that the various measures that they put on the statute book are adequately financed. I hope that the Minister will address his mind to precisely that point.
There is also the very important question of the new procedures in respect of appeals. I do not think that there is any doubt—there is no difference between the two sides of the House—that the new procedure will be very expensive indeed. We are really talking about the most expensive legal procedure, at High Court and Court of Session level. We are talking not about district courts and sheriff courts, but about the highest level of the legal and judicial process in Scotland. There can be no doubt—anyone who has any illusions about this should shed them immediately—that this new procedure,


desirable though it may be, will be very expensive.
I do not wish to go on to the two other points left in the money resolution because some of my hon. Friends are anxious to speak in this very short debate. However, all the evidence that we have seen so far from the present Government is to the effect that they have refused to uprate the rate support grant to meet the claim that has been conceded by Clegg in relation to teachers. They have refused to make more money available to health boards to meet the claim that has been conceded by Clegg in relation to nurses and the medical profession. There is no evidence in the history of the present Government that additional resources will be made available by them to meet the new provisions that will be implemented should the Bill become an Act.
It is dishonest for a Government to come forward with a money resolution pretending to the people of Scotland that the money resolution and the Criminal Justice (Scotland) Bill are somehow linked. They are, in fact, linked; but, unless the Government prove that the link exists by making the additional resources available, their determination to push this Bill through on to the statute book will be seen as a very shallow act indeed, because it is the easiest thing in the world to legislate and not to provide the money. I hope that the Minister will make it abundantly clear that his determination and the determination that will be displayed by his senior colleague the Solicitor-General for Scotland in Committee will be matched equally by a determination of the Treasury.
I am sorry that no Treasury Minister is present to answer this debate. I do not say that in any derogatory sense to the Ministers present. At the end of the day Treasury Ministers hold the purse-strings. The motion stands in the name of the Minister. Although he was not guilty of misleading the House on a former occasion, he is less than specific in his comments. I therefore welcome the Under-Secretary's presence, because he is usually more specific. Those who hold the purse-strings should be here to answer the debate, and to assure us that the money will be made available. If it is not made available, everyone in Scot-

land will see the Criminal Justice (Scotland) Bill as a very shallow measure.

Mr. Norman Buchan: I endorse every word that my hon. Friend the Member for Stirling, Falkirk and Grangemouth (Mr. Ewing) has said. There was a long delay before the money resolution was brought forward. That is mysterious. Presumably, almost every Act that will be affected is listed. Aspects (a) to (f), for which more money will be needed, are listed. If so, why could not the money resolution have been formally and properly debated immediately after debate on the Bill? What is the mystery? We should be given an explanation.
The resolution and the Bill estimate that those subjects listed on today's Order Paper will cost an additional £650,000. Does the Minister still stand by that? If so, those elements in the Bill that were said to be progressive, such as detoxification units for drunken persons and grants for hostel accommodation for those under supervision, will be very shoddy. The truth is that these provisions, including detention centres, would and should cost much more. If they cost that amount they will be shoddy, and if they cost much more—as they should—local authorities will have to pay the cost unless the money resolution is changed.
Local authorities have been given a rate support grant that is based on an inflation rate of 13 per cent. We all know that that is absolute nonsense. Inflation is now running at 19·8 per cent. By next month the rate of inflation will have reached 20 per cent. The Chief Secretary to the Treasury has told us that the Government's monetarist policy is unlikely to work, as there is no link between restriction of the money supply and inflation. It is a financial muck-up and demonstrates a muck-up in the Government's understanding of their Bill.
Those things of which no mention is made on the Order Paper are equally important. For example, no mention is made of legal aid in those cases where redress is sought as a result of the iniquitous provisions of detention and search. Perhaps the Government do not intend to give legal aid in such cases. Perhaps they do not intend to allow any such form of redress. No proper safeguards, such as


those existing for arrest, have been written into the Bill. Is that why the Government have switched from arrest to detention? Is that why they are using powers of search? Are they seeking a cheap method of clobbering some of our young people? Is that what lies behind the curious figure of £650,000?
If the Government mean "search and detention", errors will be made. If errors are made, cases will arise. If such cases arise, we need to know. There is nothing about that on the Order Paper. We need to know if legal aid will be provided to those seeking redress.
Brief mention is made of judicial examination. The Bill refers to additional staff. I had thought that the Government were in business in order to cut down on manpower levels in the public sector. Do the Government intend to implement a provision that no one in the legal profession has welcomed? I can think of no respectable, responsible legal body that will welcome these provisions. Nevertheless, the cost of extra staff will be incurred.
The extra staff, the extra costs, hostels, detention centres and the redress in relation to search and detention—all this is being done within the limit of £650,000. I do not believe it. These things will be done under the Social Work (Scotland) Act which will involve cost to local authorities. They will also be done under the Local Government (Scotland) Act involving more cost to local authorities. All these things are to be done within that limit. Does the Minister expect us to believe that? He had better have some good explanation, or he had better tell us that the Chief Secretary to the Treasury has got it wrong.

Mr. Donald Dewar: Perhaps during the course of the Committee stage my colleagues and I will make speeches that are unsympathetic and unhelpful, but we can pride ourselves tonight on the fact that we appear in this debate in a role which would be approved by Conservatives in Scotland and anywhere else. We are worried about public expenditure, the control of it and whether the Government have got it right.

I notice that the Solicitor-General for Scotland gave tongue last night in Milnathort, when he talked about an orchestrated assault on the integrity of the police and on the Criminal Justice (Scotland) Bill. He invented a new collective noun—"a spectrum of Left-wing groups"—and went on to talk sinisterly about that particularly undesirable type—"the intellectual of the Left". I do not know whether I should hang my head in shame as being identified as an intellectual of the Left. I think that many of my hon. Friends would find it a slightly unlikely role for me. However, tonight I am not interested in general orchestrated assaults on the Bill. I am interested in the £650,000 and how it will be spent.
I have an enormous amount of sympathy with the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Renfrewshire, West (Mr. Buchan) when he says that it is surprising to find this Government coming forward with provisions which they say quite frankly in the explanatory memorandum at the beginning of the Criminal Justice (Scotland) Bill will lead to the need for additional staff. It would help if the Minister could say a little about how much of the £650,000 net figure will go on additional staff costs and how many extra bodies will result.
I am also particularly interested in one of the possible areas of additional expenditure, namely, compensation for the victims. This provision of Dunpark has been very much modified in the Bill. I assume that the initial expenditure cannot come from the scheme, because the compensation is to be met by the convicted offender and paid by him to the victim. However, I assume that the additional expenditure arises under clause 58 of the Bill, which means that the sheriff clerk will have the duty of collecting the money and paying it out. He will have the even more important duty of pursuing payments that are not made under civil diligence.
Perhaps the Minister will say a word or two about the serious impact that this will have on the work load of sheriff clerks' departments. For years we have talked about the possibility of matrimonial payments and other periodical allowances being recovered by some sort of official collection agency, presumably


working through the civil department of the sheriff clerks' service. Ministers have constantly resisted this—very properly—on the ground that it would mean an enormous increase in the work load and the staff. I accept that the operation in this Bill would be rather more modest, because I do not suppose that there will be a veritable flood of these orders, but, clearly, the Government hope that this provision will be used, and I believe that it will have a considerable impact on the staffing commitment of sheriff clerks. I want to know more about that and what proportion of this extra 650,000 will be spent on this aspect.
I was also interested in the remarks of my hon. Friend the Member for Stirling, Falkirk and Grangemouth (Mr. Ewing) about adult offenders' hostels and detoxification centres. That is important. I plead lamentable ignorance on the matter, but perhaps expenditure under these heads will be included in local authority budgets, rather than central Government budgets, and will therefore not be included in the figure of £650,000. We need some reassurance on that matter. If there is any expenditure under these heads, it will make the figure extraordinarily miserable and inadequate. It is no good passing general exhortatory legislation and saying that it is a good cause and that local authorities will be able to do something about it but that no finance will be allocated. That is intolerable. I want to know whether there is any provision in public finance, either under this specific head or under some other Treasury subdivision of mysterious public Estimates, that will allow local authorities to do what they are invited to do under the Bill.
I turn to more controversial matters, and I hope that the Minister will be able to provide information on issues that have been raised by my hon. Friends. The Under-Secretary of State knows that many Labour Members have severe reservations about the new provisions in clause 2. We cannot go into that matter tonight, but we are entitled to ask for more details about the financial impact of the clause. It is speculative, but at the end of the day it will make considerable demands on police time. It goes back to the old question that if a power is in the Bill the Government presumably hope that it will be used, and if it is used it

will presumably take up police resources and enery and will therefore have an impact on police budgets. The total figure in the money resolution is, therefore, surprisingly small.
I presume that no part of the £650,000 is devoted to the provision of tape recorders. I know that the Minister is in favour of the concept of tape recorders, and I have no doubt that he hopes that the experiments that have started in Dundee, and which are about to start in Falkirk, will be a success. It would be surprising if he did not take that view, because he will remember that during the debate on the previous Criminal Justice Bill the then Opposition Front Bench spokesman on legal matters, now the Solicitor-General, made it clear that he thought that tape recording was a desirable innovation to be used in conjunction with these powers. He made that point on a television programme in Scotland last Friday. I presume that when we discuss that part of the Bill there will be a receptive ear on the Government Front Bench.
Amendments have already been tabled stating that evidence should not be admissible until tape recorders are installed and the relevant tapes are lodged in court. If that is so, I should like to know from the Minister whether provision has been made in the £620,000 for tape recorders and, if not, will the Minister consider consulting the Treasury to find out whether arrangements can be made to allow that development? I know that the Minister has given much attention to the matter, and he will no doubt be able to tell us the potential cost of installing this equipment in police stations so that we can make a judgment on whether it will be possible to include it in the somewhat stricter limits which the Conservative Government have imposed on public spending. If tape recorders are not introduced the position will be intolerable and the provisions of clause 2 will not simply be undesirable; they will become totally unacceptable.
I turn to judicial examination. That will involve shorthand writers and much shrieval time. An increase in the fiscal service and in the number of sheriffs on the bench will be required. It is costly to provide a verbatim report. May we have some costings on the exercise? It is clear that judicial examinations will involve considerable costs.
We do not have enough information. The figure provided is paltry. The Bill contains some good measures, but the controversial parts are thoroughly bad. If we are to be lumbered with it as a result of the Conservative majority, we must have an assurance that at least the finance is available to make it workable.

Mr. Dennis Canavan: I shall be brief. We are entitled to an explanation of the issues raised. Why has only one Minister put his name to the resolution? That Treasury Minister, who has no responsibility for law and order in Scotland, has not even had the decency to come here to express his support for the resolution in his name. Where is the Secretary of State for Scotland's name? Where is the Under-Secretary of State's name? Where is the Solicitor-General for Scotland tonight? He is probably lying in his bed after attacking people at the weekend because they are opposed to this nasty piece of legislation which will make law and order more difficult to maintain and improve in Scotland. It will make the job of the police more difficult.
There can be no serious quibble about an increase in social expenditure in some of the areas covered by the resolution. I have no objection to increases in expenditure on legal aid, on the care of people with alcohol problems and detoxification centres, on legal aid in connection with identification parades and compensation, provided that that expenditure will improve existing services and standards of justice. I wonder whether the Government have thought out the financial repercussions of the legislation.
The Government are always saying that they will decrease the numbers employed in the public sector and cut public expenditure. It is strange that one of the few increases in public expenditure is on law and order. It would not be so bad if expenditure on health, social services and education were increased because they are relevant to the improvement in law and order in addition to employing extra policemen and court officials. I wonder whether only 50 additional staff will be needed and whether the £650,000 per annum will be all that is needed.

Mr. Harry Ewing: My hon. Friend referred to the police. Only today the chief constable of the Central region has issued a confidential report—which, as always, has become widely known—in which he says that he requires substantial increases in police manpower to meet the conditions of the Bill and the increasing demand on police time.

Mr. Canavan: Yes. My hon. Friend is right. I read that report from the chief constable, who services part of my constituency. In some parts of Scotland, the police may be a bit understaffed even at present.
I predict that this bad Bill will make the job of the police far more difficult. It will make the shortage of policemen more acute. It will sour the relationships between policemen and the community, and it will increase the time spent by policemen on many of the tasks that they are required to perform already, and then they will have these additional tasks of being expected to seize people, detain them and question them in a police station for a certain number of hours.
I wonder sometimes whether the Government have thought out fully the repercussions of this measure in terms of police manpower. They will be making the job of the police much more difficult. Many chief constables throughout Scotland will demand from the Secretary of State and the Under-Secretary more manpower. They will want their present complements raised.
The House is entitled to an explanation from the Under-Secretary. This is a very bad Bill, and I do not think that we have even had a satisfactory explanation of its financial repercussions, never mind its grave repercussions for the maintenance of law and order.

The Under-Secretary of State for Scotland (Mr. Malcolm Rifkind): The hon. Member for West Stirlingshire (Mr. Canavan) will be aware that, because of the additional help that the Government are giving the police in Scotland, for the first time in their history they are approaching full establishment figures not only in other parts of Scotland but in the region which the hon. Gentleman represents. I am sure that he will welcome that.


The hon. Members for Stirling, Falkirk and Grangemouth (Mr. Ewing) and for Renfrewshire, West (Mr. Buchan) asked why the money resolution was tabled for debate today and was not taken with the Second Reading of the Bill. They will be aware that for that to have happened it would have been necessary for the money resolution to be tabled before the House rose for Easter. Because the Third Reading of the Bill in the other place took place only shortly before the House rose, that did not prove possible. For that reason, it could not be taken at the time of Second Reading.
The hon. Member for Stirling, Falkirk and Grangemouth quoted my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State, who said on Second Reading that the money resolution would be taken in plenty of time before the clauses that it affected were debated in Committee. The hon. Gentleman implied that that commitment was not being maintained. In a sense I am delighted to hear that, because the first clause affected by the money resolution is clause 5, and, if the Committee can look forward to reaching that tomorrow morning, I shall be happy to apologise to the Committee at that stage.

Mr. Harry Ewing: I ought to tell the hon. Gentleman that the Opposition were anxious to proceed with the Bill, but that the late tabling of the money resolution has caused us to change our minds.

Mr. Rifkind: I am interested to hear that. I suppose, then, that we can assume that we shall at least reach clause 4 tomorrow morning, and that we shall have to wait until Thursday before clause 5 can be considered. We understand the hon. Gentleman's problems in that respect.
Hon. Members have asked for details of the amounts that will be available for each of the categories concerned in the money resolution, and I am able to give some general information, although I must emphasise that these are estimates. However, when the Opposition complained about the resources being made available in the Bill, there was a conspicuous silence about their own Bill and the comparable elements in that Bill, which the hon. Member for Stirling, Falkirk and Grangemouth himself sponsored through this House.

I was asked how much was being made available in the Bill to deal with the various categories. The hon. Member for Glasgow, Garscadden (Mr. Dewar) asked about compensation orders. In a very approximate sense, a sum of about £125,000 is estimated to be appropriate for this category. A rough estimate of the cost of the reform of both the solemn and summary appeal procedure is £200,000. The requirement of additional court staff under the category of judicial examination is also estimated to cost £200,000.
A number of hon. Members asked about detoxification centres. The hon. Member for Stirling, Falkirk and Grangemouth made great play of how terrible it would be if the Government brought forward this measure without making cash available for it. He forgot to mention that this was exactly what happened under the Labour Government, when he himself was the responsible Minister. We should perhaps pass by that matter in silence.

Mr. Harry Ewing: That is misrepresentation.

Mr. Rifkind: We shall look forward to hearing why that is misrepresentation. I am happy to give way if the hon. Gentleman wishes to say what amount was committed under his Bill for this purpose.

Mr. Harry Ewing: The difference between the present Government and the previous Government is that the latter estimated that public expenditure in relation to local authorities in Scotland would grow at the rate of 2 per cent. a year. Under the present Government, public expenditure for local authorities is scheduled to decrease substantially in the next five years to a low level. Under the public expenditure provisions of the previous Government, local authorities at least had some chance of financing the programmes that we were introducing. They have no chance under the public expenditure programmes that this Government are introducing.

Mr. Rifkind: I thank the hon. Gentleman for confirming that under his Criminal Justice Bill no specific provision was made for detoxification centres. It would be inappropriate for this Government not to follow so sensible a


precedent set by the Opposition when they had responsibility for these matters.
Hon. Members asked about the tape recording experiment. The experiments that have started in Dundee and Falkirk are estimated to cost about £36,000. If the experiment results in the implementation of tape recording in police stations throughout Scotland, it is estimated that the cost will be about £500,000. This matter is not referred to specifically in the Bill. It would therefore be inappropriate for the money resolution to refer to it.

Mr. Dewar: Can the Minister give an assurance that if the experiment is successful, or if an amendment is approved in Comittee to tie tape recorders into the Bill, the money will be forthcoming and there will be no difficulty in finding it?

Mr. Rifkind: The Government have already made it clear that if the experiment is shown to be successful they will wish to implement the recommendation. We have indicated that, in the Government's view, as in the view of the Opposition when they were responsible for these matters, legislation is not required for this purpose. There is no need for the matter to be specifically included in the Bill. I have already indicated that if the experiment is successful the Government intend that it should be implemented. There would otherwise be little point in conducting the experiment in the first place.
The hon. Member for Renfrewshire, West asked the interesting question why the Bill did not include any sum to allow legal aid for those detained contrary to the law and who would therefore seek reparation or damages from the courts for that abuse. The hon. Gentleman will appreciate that the Government do not start from the premise that this is a requirement to be introduced in the Bill. He must be aware that at the moment, when someone is wrongfully arrested and seeks damages or compensation, that is not an issue that has to be included in legislation for the matter to be properly dealt with.
So far as any question of legal aid is concerned the position of anyone wrongfully detained will be the same as that of anyone wrongfully arrested. The two are

identical, as I should have thought was obvious to all concerned.

Mr. Buchan: I shall look into this matter as the Bill progresses. Will the Minister say who pays under headings (a) and (f)? Will the local authorities pay?

Mr. Rifkind: The hon. Gentleman refers to drunken persons and hostel accommodation. An estimated £100,000 is provided under clause 77 for hostel accommodation. As under the previous Government's proposals, provision for detoxification centres is a matter for health boards, voluntary organisations or other bodies. This Government, like the previous one, have not allowed a specific amount for this purpose under the Bill. We are following the precedent set by our predecessors, and that is an appropriate way of pursuing the matter.
Unfortunately, the debate has to be terminated within a minute, but I intend to give much fuller details in Committee. I hope that the explanations that I have given—[Interruption.]—I am sorry that the hon. Gentleman will not be with us in Committee—
It being a quarter to Eleven o'clock, Mr. DEPUTY SPEAKER put the Question, pursuant to Standing Order No. 3 (Exempted Business).

Question agreed to.

Resolved,
That, for the purposes of any Act of the present session to make further provision as regards criminal justice in Scotland, it is expedient to authorise the payment out of moneys provided by Parliament of any increase in the sums so payable under or by virtue of—
the Sheriff Courts and Legal Officers (Scotland) Act 1927;
the Administration of Justice (Scotland) Act 1933;
the Sheriff Courts (Scotland) Act 1971;
the Legal Aid (Scotland) Act 1967;
the Social Work (Scotland) Act 1968 or
the Local Government (Scotland) Act 1966 in so far as any such increase is attributable to provisions of the said Act of the present session which relate to—

(a) the care of drunken persons;
(b) the conduct of judicial examinations;
(c) identification parades and legal aid at such parades;
(d) new procedures in respect of appeals;
(e) compensation by offenders; or
(f) grants in respect of hostel accommodation for persons under supervision.

OLYMPIC GAMES

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Mather.]

Mr. Tam Dalyell: As this Adjournment debate has dragged the Minister of State back from the Foreign Ministers' meeting at Luxembourg, I should like to acknowledge his courtesy in being here for this follow-up debate to that of 27 March. I refer to columns 1793 and 1794 of Hansard, and hope that he will be able to report on the results of his comparing notes with other Governments and on the possible high quality of events in the Olympics.
The purpose of yet another Adjournment debate is to continue the argument of 27 March and to show that some of us are shoulder to shoulder with the British Olympic Committee in its determination to go to Moscow. It is probably a mistake, on balance—certainly with the advantage of hindsight—for the Russian Army ever to have set foot in Afghanistan. I suspect that there are many Russians who know it. Equally, it was a great mistake for a Labour Government, with Conservative backing, to put the British Army into Northern Ireland. I suspect that many Members of Parliament know that also. Albeit that Northern Ireland is part of Britain and Afghanistan is a separate country with which Russia has had the closest historical links, the two cases have this in common: that an army was sent in to sort out messy and cruel factual strife among people living in the middle ages. And once an army is there it is hellishly difficult to create the circumstances whereby it can easily withdraw.
Perhaps the Russians should not have started preparing to send in troops when some of their technical advisers were brutally murdered in April 1979 in Herat. Perhaps they should not have interfered in what looked like a terrible Pol Pot Cambodian situation. Perhaps in backing Karmal, the most popular figure in Afghanistan as short a time ago as 1978, they backed a man who was trying to modernise Afghan society too quickly. But what is preposterous and absurd is to suggest that we are dealing with Russian colonial—I repeat "colonial "—aggression. That is rubbish.
I have too high a regard for the intelligence of the officials of the British Foreign

Office to suppose that most of them believe that claptrap. I have too high a regard for the intelligence of the Minister of State to suppose that he believes it.

Mr. Tony Marlow: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Mr. Dalyell: No.

Mr. Marlow: Mr. Marlow rose——

Mr. Dalyell: Bluntly, what we heard at Question Time on Wednesday last bore the imprint of the present occupant of No. 10 Downing Street. The romantic view of Afghan freedom fighters gallantly resisting a Russian colonialist army bears little relation to the facts.
The fact is that on no fewer than 14 occasions—from March 1979 onwards—the leaders of the Afghan Government, Presidents Taraki and Amin, requested the Soviet Government to send in troops. The Russian view was that to have refused Kabul's request would have condemned Afghanistan to the destiny of Chile, or much worse. It is beyond any reasonable dispute that if Amin was not a CIA agent he was at least playing a double game by wanting the Americans to help him against some of his own colleagues and other factions in Afghanistan. The fact is that Mother Russia was not going to have an anti-Russian stronghold at that point on her borders.
It is against that background that we have to consider the urgent request from President Carter that we should boycott the Olympics in Moscow. Basically, I believe that this request is not about the good of the people of Afghanistan at all. It is about the dire political needs of Jimmy Carter. The brutal truth is that the White House of President Carter drifted into postures over Afghanistan on the winds of the American people's understandable frustration over the hostages in Iran.
I do not complain about their attitude over the hostages—that is a different issue—and their general impatience with the lack of economic success of Mr. Carter's presidency, but should the Olympic Games be sacrificed and the continuance of a great force for good in the world be put in peril basically for the ephemeral political needs of Jimmy Carter as a candidate?
I do not apologise for being irreverent. Ever since the day in 1967 when I


emerged from the basement office of the White House after a searing row about Vietnam and British east of Suez policy with Walter Rostow—then Lyndon Johnson's security adviser—I have thought that the White House was a corrupt and corrupting place, geared to personal relationships and ambitions far removed from the good of humankind. In the week that Mr. Gordon Liddy published his horrific memoirs, I do not see any need to revise that opinion.
I listened extremely carefully to the Minister in his debate with Brian War den yesterday and the argument about a spiritual and emotional crisis in the Alliance. I accept that there is a mighty problem here, but at the time that Mike Mansfield put forward his amendment a number of my hon. Friends and I thought that it had a great deal to commend it.
The idea that the Olympics should be a litmus test of loyalty—"if you disagree, you are disloyal" —is a dangerous line of argument. The Minister told Brian Walden that it was important that the United States should not view the world in which its friends live as an unfriendly place, But should we sacrifice the 1984 Games and a great deal else in the world to the passing needs of the presidency of the United States?
The Minister must take on board Brian Walden's argument that President Carter will be worried if the voters think that he cannot get the support of even his friends. That is very near the nub of the issue that we are discussing. As Alastair Cooke pointed out yesterday morning, what is really weighing with Carter is that Reagan is taunting him about whether only the USA athletes will be withdrawn from Moscow. That is the reason for the pressure on the British Government.
Indeed, in our last debate on Thursday 27 March, the Minister rebuked me for being personal about Mr. Lenski and said that it was not my normal style. Nor is it, but I will go further. An American President who has as his security adviser a first-generation Russian Pole with all sorts of hang-ups really needs to think again. Mr. Brzezinski comes on with all this stuff about the build-up in the Trans-caucasian military district. I am told by my friend John Erikson—I make no apology for naming him; he is well

known to the Foreign Office—that reports of such a build up were nonsense, and they are denied by other members of the National Security Council. If anything is worrying, it is the chaos in which the central planning and policy-making department of the American Government finds itself. One thing after another from the National Security Council is at variance, and that should give the West grave concern.
In the demands to boycott the Games, we are asked to stand by the United States and a highly questionable set-up in Washington. I say Washington advisedly, because it is interesting that the editor of The Times, Mr. William ReesMogg, writing in his paper on Tuesday last week, suggested that feeling outside Washington might be a bit different. He said:
I very much suspect that this is the public opinion that is in evidence, and that the genuine and broad American public opinion is more self-confident, more rational and more restrained.
Nor should the British Olympic Committee pay any heed to our own Prime Minister. Normally, I would ask people in this circumstance to pay attention to the Government, regardless of party, but the right hon. Member for Sidcup (Mr. Heath), Sir Alec Douglas-Home or Harold Macmillan, who was Prime Minister when I first became an hon. Member, would surely have behaved properly. It is inconceivable that all this stuff about boycotting the Olympics should splurge forth during Prime Minister's questions, with imperious demands without consultation with the British Olympic Committee.
The Prime Minister thinks that she has to be tough, partly perhaps because she is a woman and partly for the sake of being tough. She gets caught up in the ridiculous image of the Iron Lady, justifying previous attitudes and increased defence expenditure. The truth of the matter is that during the Vietnam war the Tokyo, Mexico and Montreal Olympics took place. Dare I say that we were reminded by Chris Brasher, talking of his experience with Chris Chataway back in 1956, that the Melbourne Olympics went forward at the same time as a British Army was engaged in Egypt—a fiasco, as some of us would see it—and, indeed, the Russians were engaged in Hungary? I am bound to point out that, like it or not,


this time the Soviet athletes went to Lake Placid.
There is still great resentment, as Charles Palmer and others see it, that sport is the only weapon that seems to be used. I shall not go into detail, because I want to give my hon. Friend the Member for Workington (Mr. Campbell-Savours) two or three minutes. Nothing is deterring the Lord Mayor of Sheffield from going off on a twin visit to Donetsk. Nothing is stopping the Russian swimmers over here. There are many other exchanges, not least the training exchanges to which I have referred on five previous occasions.
I hope that the British Olympic Committee will stick beside that special provision in the Olympic charter that urges athletes not to be influenced by political decisions. To me, the heroes of the day are Denis Follows, Dick Palmer, Charles Palmer and other members of the British Olympic Committee who have kept their heads and acted not only for sport but for the future of mankind. For Western athletes not to go to Moscow would simply be another step in drifting back to a cold war. Is that what we want?

Mr. D. N. Campbell-Savours: I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for West Lothian (Mr. Dalyell) for allowing me the opportunity to intervene in the debate.
The time at which to object to the inclusion of British athletes in the Moscow Olympics was from February to October 1974, when the International Olympic Committee was taking the decision to hold the Games in Moscow. The relevance of that period was that it followed only six years after the invasion of Czechoslovakia.
I searched the records of the House of Commons Library to establish the position of Conservative Members at that time, to find out who objected. I find that there were no Adjournment debates called, no early-day motions signed, no Private Members' motions applied for and no Government statements by cither the outgoing Labour Government or the incoming Conservative Government. Indeed, there were no statements by the right hon. Lady who is now the Prime Minister. I should like to ask the Minister of State what he did in 1974 about the decision of the International Olympic

Committee to hold those Games in Moscow, following the invasion of Czechoslovakia in August 1968.
The reaction of the Government on Afghanistan grossly underestimates the importance of the invasion not only of Czechoslovakia in 1968 but of Hungary in 1956 and of Lithuania, Latvia and all the countries that were occupied by the advancing Soviet Army at the end of the Second World War. Are they not all as important? If they are, why is it that the Government have sought to object only on this occasion? Could it be, as my hon. Friend said, that they have grossly over-reacted to the domestic problems of President Carter in the United States, whose shabby politics on the international scene have led to what I would call the discrediting of a number of European Governments who are likely to fall into the same trap?

The Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Mr. Douglas Hurd): The hon. Member for West Lothian (Mr. Dalyell) need not apologise in any way for returning to this matter, which is of great public interest and importance. He has been entirely consistent in his approach. Of course, if one does not make much of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, as he does not, it is logical to say that it does not matter whether the athletes go.
The hon. Gentleman said today that it was probably a mistake for the Soviet Union to go into Afghanistan, but that is not the view of most hon. Members, and it is certainly not the view of the international community. The hon. Gentleman has gone to great trouble, time and again, with ingenuity, to find various explanations and excuses for the Soviet action; the kind of explanations that could be dredged up to excuse any form of aggression in the world's history.
The parallel with Northern Ireland, which we heard again today, is extraordinarily far-fetched. There is all the difference in the world between the enforcement of order in part of a free country by the forces of that country, in a part of that country that has free elections and free institutions, and the invasion by the Soviet Union of another country, sovereign under international law, and the continuing aggression there by an enormous army; aggression that has been


condemned by 104 countries of the international community. The hon. Gentleman does not do the argument good by reverting to that comparison or the other arguments that he has used from time to time.
At least the hon. Gentleman is wholly consistent in his approach. He says that the Russians have made a mistake, but that it is nothing to worry about too much; it is excusable in various ways, and therefore we should not make such a fuss about the Olympics. What I do not understand is the position taken by many people, who fiercely condemn the Soviet Union's aggression in Afghanistan and yet continue to say that the aggressor should benefit from the jamboree in Moscow.
It is natural that athletes—our athletes, all athletes—should be anxious to go to Moscow. The Government have always recognised and understood that, but people now clutch at arguments that have no validity in support of that stance. The whole thrust of the policies of the Western Alliance is undergoing a change. It is not a matter of the election campaign of the President of the United States. The analyses have varied from time to time, but there is no responsible Western leader who does not believe that the policies and stance of the Western alliance along the are of crisis vis-à-vis the Soviet Union should now undergo a change.
A major effort is being made—sometimes in a ragged way, I agree—and several important decisions have not yet been taken. But a major change, a sea change, has taken place, inevitably, it seems to me, as a result of the Soviet in vasion—

Mr. Barry Sheerman: A new cold war.

Mr. Hurd: —with the aim not of punishing the Russians but of making it less likely that when and if the next opportunity presents itself they can take the same decision again. It is essentially a policy of deterrence. If we allow the Soviet aggression in Afghanistan to continue unchecked, it is likely to be repeated. That is the analysis not of President Carter, running for re-election, but of every responsible Western leader. It is a desperately serious judgment.
The question that faced not only President Carter but my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister and all other Western leaders was whether, in those circumstances, against that judgment, they could allow the Olympic Games to go untouched, without discouraging the competitors. I do not think that that was easy. They had to take into account that the Olympic Games in Moscow are not, in the eyes of the Soviet Union, a simple sporting competition but a major political event, and that the whole propaganda and briefing put out by the Soviet Union in advance of the Games has made that clear.
In many ways this has been a wretched argument. The feelings that have been aroused, and the sacrifices that have been asked, have been great. It must have occurred to many of us to ask, as this has been going on "Would it have been possible for President Carter, the Prime Minister and all the other leaders"—the President of Kenya, for example; I do not think that he is running for election, but he courageously took this line from the outset—"to forget the Olympics, to say ' We shall do X, Y and Z, but we shall let the Olympics go on'?"
Every time I think about it I am driven back to the conclusion that that would not have been possible. For the Soviet Union this is a major political event which, to the great bad fortune of the athletes, happens to be occurring several months after the beginning of the aggression. I do not think that it is open to those who make the judgment—which the hon. Gentleman does not—that this is a major sinister and potentially disastrous event in the world's history to allow the Olympics to go on, as it were, without bothering about them and doing their best to discourage the athletes from going.
The hon. Member for Workington (Mr. Campbell-Savours) has a point when he talks about the original choice of Moscow. Those who took that decision were taking a great gamble. It may be that we should have attacked them at that time for doing so, but it was their decision. In retrospect, with the benefit of hindsight, it was a great gamble—the gamble consisting of deciding a long time in advance that it would be possible to hold the Games in Moscow when the policies of the Soviet Union are essentially expansionist and unpredictable. I think that


that decision was a gamble taken several years ago—a gamble that has clearly not come off.

Mr. Sheerman: What about the Americans in Vietnam?

Mr. Hurd: No Games were held in America during the Vietnam war, and I do not think that the Soviet Union would have gone to them if they had been.
The British Olympic Association took its decision on 25 March. I do not think that it is sensible to go about attacking Sir Denis Follows or his colleagues. They were put in a difficult position, and they are doing their duty as they see it. I profoundly and strongly disagree with the decision that they took. It was clearly a foolish decision. It was taken before they needed to take it, and it has increasingly isolated British competitors from the rest of the free world.
The boycott is steadily gathering momentum. Hardly a day goes by without the athletes in some new country, some friend of ours, declaring that they will not go to Mosgow. Norway made such a declaration yesterday. Is it suggested that Norway is part of President's Carter's election campaign? Labour Members are living in a dream world. The boycott is gathering speed, and the Moscow Games are in the process of disintegrating.
We warned the British Olympic Association that that was likely to be the position. We said "Our information is that United States athletes are unlikely to go and that, if that happens, other countries which have so far kept quiet will begin to follow the athletes". The Opposition Front Bench said that we knew nothing about these matters and that the information coming to them from athletes all over the world was different. In fact, the predictions that we made are now coming true. It is increasingly clear that the Moscow Olympics, in the form originally devised, are disintegrating and that in several sports—and we are only at the middle of April—the competition will be thoroughly second-rate.
It was against that background that the hon. Member for West Lothian originally raised the question of alternative Games. He did not dwell on it particularly today, but he did last time, and it is the title of his motion. Alternative Games are not and never have been in our mind an end

in themselves. They arise simply from a desire to help competitors who decide not to go to Moscow. Therefore, the extent to which they happen depends on the extent to which, first, competitors decide not to go to Moscow—that is an increasing extent—and, secondly, on the extent to which they want to take part in other Games. Nor has it ever been the aim—and the hon. Member for West Lothian will know this because it has often come out in our exchanges—to provide a rival jamboree at the same time as Moscow. What we have said is that we were ready to discuss with sporting federations any ways in which we could help to fill the gap, as it were, which a decision not to go to Moscow would involve

Mr. Sheerman: And it has been a flop.

Mr. Hurd: We are in close touch with the three British federations which have so far said they will not be going, namely, hockey, yatching and equestrian. We have told them that we are ready to give modest financial help, if they want it, to help those who have followed our advice about where the British interest lies. I think that it would be right to thank those who took that decision, at great personal sacrifice, against, at that time, a tide of opinion. I think that it will become perfectly clear as the weeks go by that they are overwhelmingly supported.

Mr. Sheerman: Pushed and shoved.

Mr. Hurd: As regards our contacts with the yatchsmen—hon Gentlemen pressed me hard last time to give details; I can now begin to do so—they are going ahead next month with what were planned as pre-Olympic trials, since selection is necessary for other international events. Indications are growing that yatchsmen in other countries, including those whose national Olympic committees at present favour going to Moscow, could decide, like ours, to stay away. The quality of the yachting events at Tallinn could be seriously undermined.
It may be—it is too early to say—that an alternative regatta will find favour among the increasing number of yatchsmen who are not going to Moscow. If the Germans decide to boycott Moscow, they have an ideal location for that in Kiel, but our yatchsmen have certainly not ruled out the possibility of such an event


being held in this country, and we have promised them every support.
Similarly, the British Equestrian Federation is giving careful consideration to additional major competitions. When I first began to talk about this subject I was told "There is nothing in it; nothing will happen". I was then pressed for information, which I could not give because the discussions were confidential. Now I am beginning to be able to give this information, and hon. Gentlemen will be interested to hear it.
Consultations will take place with the International Equestrian Federation and other national federations about timing and whether the additional events should be in the United Kingdom or overseas. The Government will certainly play their part in making sure that British riders have the opportunity to compete this year at the highest level. Discussions are going on, and obviously they are open to other sports federations to follow as they increasingly see that the competition at Moscow will not be worth the journey.

Mr. Sheerman: Tell that to Geoff Capes.

Mr. Hurd: Increasingly it will be seen. One should consider the gold medals that are won, or the medals that are won, and not just by the United States. Hon. Members are out of date if they think that this is an American boycott. It is increasingly being followed by Governments and athletes in various parts of the world.
I have criticised the decision of the British Olympic Committee because I think that it was premature and now looks remarkably foolish, but the committee was wise enough to put in an escape clause, namely, that if the situation became—

The Question having been proposed after Ten o'clock and the debate having continued for half an hour, MR. DEPUTY SPEAKER adjourned the House without Question put, pursuant to the Standing Order.

Adjourned at seventeen minutes past Eleven o'clock.